BRUSSELS — The European Commission is considering introducing quotas to boost the number of staff from underrepresented nations such as Ireland and Denmark. The Commission has resisted taking specific measures to correct geographical imbalances but posts are highly sought-after, with candidates from all countries in the bloc vying for jobs in Brussels in highly competitive examinations. A Commission document, seen by POLITICO, shows that Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Finland are among those considered “under-represented” in the EU executive, meaning staffing levels are below a “guiding rate” based on countries’ populations. Meanwhile, staffers from Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and France are considered “appropriately represented.” The document does not spell out which nationalities are overrepresented. A separate internal document, dating from early November, sets out a plan to address and correct these imbalances, which a Commission official — granted anonymity to speak freely — attributed to the fact that the institution’s salary and benefits package may be highly attractive in some countries and less so in others. These benefits include ironclad job security, flexible working arrangements, free access to European schools, and tax-free income. In the short term, starting in 2026, people recruiting staff to the Commission are instructed to monitor how these imbalances evolve by using “soft” methods that don’t amount to specific hiring targets or preferential policies. If these methods fail to produce the desired effect, then hiring officials will be asked to start implementing stronger measures. These include interviewing at least one suitable candidate from an underrepresented nationality for each job opening; giving preference to an underrepresented nationality if two people are deemed to be on the same level of competence; taking into account the Commission’s overall hiring needs when launching a recruitment drive; and applying nationality-based recruitment targets for the hiring of both permanent and so-called temporary agents (employees who don’t enjoy full civil servant status in the Commission). National capitals have long resisted hiring quotas in the Commission, arguing that it’s up to each country to promote work in the Brussels institutions and make sure there is a pipeline of candidates. But despite previous efforts to bolster candidacies from underrepresented states, including a 2022 plan to increase visibility of job vacancies and boost outreach by both the Commission and member states, efforts have so far failed to correct imbalances. The push is also a factor in an internal tug-of-war over resources, as the Commission’s former secretary-general, Catherine Day, undertakes a “large-scale review” that aims to streamline and modernize the institution. Staff unions are using the imbalance issue to argue against any changes to the Commission’s job status for civil servants, saying this could dissuade candidates from underrepresented states.

BRUSSELS ― Ursula von der Leyen is facing the starkest challenge to the EU’s accountability in a generation ― with a fraud probe ensnaring two of the biggest names in Brussels and threatening to explode into a full-scale crisis. Exactly a year into her second term as Commission president, von der Leyen, already plagued by questions over her commitment to transparency and amid simmering tension with the bloc’s foreign policy wing, must now find a way to avoid being embroiled in a scandal that dates back to her first years in office. An announcement by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office that the EU’s former foreign affairs chief and a senior diplomat currently working in von der Leyen’s Commission had been detained on Tuesday was seized on by her critics, with renewed calls that she face a fourth vote of no confidence. “The credibility of our institutions is at stake,” said Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left in the European Parliament. If proven, the allegations would set in motion the biggest scandal to engulf Brussels since the mass resignation of the Jacques Santer Commission in 1999 over allegations of financial mismanagement. Police detained former Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini, a center-left Italian politician who headed the EU’s foreign policy wing, the European External Action Service, from 2014-2019, and Stefano Sannino, an Italian civil servant who was the EEAS secretary-general from 2021 until he was replaced earlier this year. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had “strong suspicions” that a 2021-2022 tendering process to set up a diplomatic academy attached to the College of Europe, where Mogherini is rector, hadn’t been fair and that the facts, if proven, “could constitute procurement fraud, corruption, conflict of interest and violation of professional secrecy.” The saga looks set to inflame already strained relations between von der Leyen and the current boss of the EEAS, EU High Representative Kaja Kallas, four EU officials told POLITICO. Earlier this year Sannino left his secretary-general job and took up a prominent role in von der Leyen’s Commission. An EU official defended von der Leyen, instead blaming the EEAS, an autonomous service under the EU treaties that operates under the bloc’s high representative, Kallas — who is one of the 27 European commissioners. “I know the people who don’t like von der Leyen will use this against her, but they use everything against her,” the official said. Police detained former Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini, a center-left Italian politician who headed the EU’s foreign policy wing, the European External Action Service, from 2014-2019. | Christoph Gollnow/Getty Images “Because President von der Leyen is the most identifiable leader in Brussels, we lay everything at her door,” the official added. “And it’s not fair that she would face a motion of censure for something the External Action Service may have done. She’s not accountable for all of the institutions.” Mogherini, Sannino and a third person have not been charged and their detention does not imply guilt. An investigative judge has 48 hours from the start of their questioning to decide on further action. When contacted about Sannino, the Commission declined to comment. When contacted about Mogherini, the College of Europe declined to answer specific questions. In a statement it said it remained “committed to the highest standards of integrity, fairness, and compliance — both in academic and administrative matters.” ‘CRIME SERIES’ The investigation comes as Euroskeptic, populist and far-right parties ride a wave of voter dissatisfaction and at a time when the EU is pressuring countries both within and outside the bloc over their own corruption scandals. “Funny how Brussels lectures everyone on ‘rule of law’ while its own institutions look more like a crime series than a functioning union,” Zoltan Kovacs, spokesperson for the government of Hungary, which has faced EU criticism, said on X. Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, a member of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, who was behind a failed no-confidence vote in von der Leyen in July, told POLITICO he was considering trying to trigger a fresh motion. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told state media that EU officials “prefer to ignore their own problems, while constantly lecturing everyone else.” The EU has struggled to shake off a series of corruption scandals since this decade began. Tuesday’s raids come on the back of the 2022 “Qatargate” scandal, when the Gulf state was accused of seeking to influence MEPs through bribes and gifts, as well as this year’s bribery probe into Chinese tech giant Huawei’s lobbying activities in Europe.  Those investigations implicated members of the European Parliament, and at the time Commission officials were quick to point the finger at lawmakers and distance themselves from the scandals. But the Commission hasn’t been immune to allegations of impropriety. In 2012, then-Health Commissioner John Dalli resigned over a tobacco lobbying scandal. Von der Leyen herself was on the receiving end of a slap-down by the EU’s General Court, which ruled earlier this year that she shouldn’t have withheld from the public text messages that she exchanged with the CEO of drug giant Pfizer during the Covid-19 pandemic. Tuesday’s revelations are far more dangerous for the Commission, given the high profile of the suspects and the gravity of the allegations they face. ‘DISASTROUS IMPACT’ After serving as a European Commission vice president and head of the EEAS, Mogherini was appointed rector of the College of Europe in 2020, amid criticism she wasn’t qualified for the post, didn’t meet the criteria, and had entered the race months after the deadline. In 2022 she became the director of the European Union Diplomatic Academy, the project at the heart of Tuesday’s dawn raids. Sannino, a former Italian diplomat, was the EEAS’s top civil servant and is now the director-general for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf department in the Commission. Stefano Sannino, a former Italian diplomat, was the EEAS’s top civil servant and is now the director-general for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf department in the Commission. | Pool Photo by Johanna Geron via Getty Images Cristiano Sebastiani, the staff representative of one of the EU’s major trade unions, Renouveau & Démocratie, said that if proven, the allegations would have “a disastrous impact on the credibility of the institutions concerned, and more broadly on citizens’ perception of all European institutions.” He said he had received “tens of messages” from EU staff concerned about reputational damage. “This is not good for EU institutions and for the Commission services. It is not good for Europe, it steers attention away from other things,” said a Commission official granted anonymity to speak freely. “It conveys this idea of elitism, of an informal network doing favors. Also, Mogherini was one of the most successful [EU high representatives], it’s not good in terms of public diplomacy.”

Angelika Niebler, head of the powerful center-right German delegation in the European Parliament, is being investigated for misusing EU funds, according to four parliamentary officials.  The European Parliament’s legal affairs committee will start discussing on Tuesday afternoon whether to lift the parliamentary immunity of Niebler — a member of the European People’s Party — following a request from the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. A committee hearing with Niebler herself will follow, and a final decision is not expected for several months. According to two of the four parliamentary officials, all granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive case, Niebler has been accused by EPPO of hiring assistants to chauffeur her from her hometown of Munich to Brussels and Strasbourg, as well as to private and business appointments not linked to her work as an MEP. EPPO also alleges that she got her assistants in Brussels to carry out private chores not related to her work as a lawmaker, and hired an assistant in Germany using Parliament cash to work for a former MEP colleague. The Parliament’s rules state that assistants can only help with parliamentary duties.  “The allegations are unfounded. I wish that the facts of the matter are clarified as quickly and completely as possible,” Niebler told POLITICO. “I will fully support this investigation.” A spokesperson for EPPO said the organization would “neither comment, nor do we confirm which investigations we are working on. This is to not endanger the outcome of the possible investigation.” MEPs get €30,769 a month to spend on staff, either in the Parliament in Brussels or in their local constituency office. Niebler, a longtime MEP, is a member of the Christian Social Union, the sister party of the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The CSU and CDU are part of the EU’s biggest political family, the EPP. Since 2014, Niebler has co-led the CDU/CSU delegation in the Parliament along with Daniel Caspary, who is due to step down to join the European Court of Auditors at the end of the year. 

The European Commission is beefing up its internal security, including plans for more secure meeting rooms, according to an internal note seen by POLITICO. There is “increased demand” for tighter security, says the note from the Corporate Management Board, which reports to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The board has asked the Commission’s human resources department “for a more thorough and comprehensive assessment of the needs for secure meeting rooms, carefully considering the different categories of information handled.” The board also asked HR “to further explore alternatives for sharing secure meeting rooms, including their cost.” The current Commission has been putting in place measures to bolster security, including through the creation of a Security College. “Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” von der Leyen said in March as she celebrated 100 days of her second Commission. “This is also true for my Commission. To deal with the challenging way ahead, we need to switch into a preparedness mindset. This is why, in the next weeks, I will convene the first-ever Security College.” The college is designed to ensure that commissioners are regularly updated on security threats and developments. According to two officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss security issues, security cards used by commissioners and top officials, such as directors general and heads of cabinet, now allow greater access than those used by other staffers. The board also asked HR to draw up “a sound legal framework for personal security clearance for certain categories of staff.” In addition, it said there should be “regular and planned evacuation and shelter in place exercises.” (The latter is a safety drill that simulates an emergency in which people must remain inside.)

The European Central Bank’s staff union is taking the bank to court, accusing ECB management of trying to silence and intimidate its representatives in violation of the principles of European democracy. The case, lodged with the European Court of Justice on Oct. 13, marks the latest escalation in a battle between union representatives and management, where relations have deteriorated since Christine Lagarde took over as ECB president in 2019. The action contests a series of letters the bank addressed to the International and European Public Services Organization (IPSO) union and one of its senior representatives “restricting staff and union representatives from speaking publicly about workplace concerns, such as favoritism and the ‘culture of fear’ at the ECB,” the union said in a statement. These letters constitute “an unlawful interference” with basic freedoms guaranteed by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, the union said. “Freedom of expression and association are not privileges; they are the foundation of the European project.” An ECB spokesperson said the bank does not comment on court cases, but that it “is firmly committed to the freedom of expression and the rule of law, operating within a clear employment framework that is closely aligned with EU Staff Regulations and is subject to European Court of Justice scrutiny.” The first letter, signed by the ECB’s Chief Services Officer Myriam Moufakkir, came in response to an interview given by union spokesperson Carlos Bowles to Germany’s Boersen-Zeitung daily paper, published May 7. In it, Bowles had warned that a culture of fear may contribute to self-censorship, groupthink and poor policy decisions. The interview came at a time when the ECB’s failure to anticipate the worst bout of inflation in half a century had provoked widespread and public soul-searching by policymakers. It also followed a union survey in which around two-thirds of respondents said being in the good graces of powerful figures was the key to career advancement at the ECB, rather than job performance.   IPSO IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD According to the IPSO union, Moufakkir responded with a letter stressing that staff and union representatives must not make public claims of a “culture of fear” within the institution or its possible effects on ECB operations — including its forecasting work, which had come under especially intense scrutiny. It also accused Bowles of breaching his duty of loyalty under the ECB’s internal code of conduct, and instructed him to refrain from public statements that could “damage the ECB’s reputation.” A later letter by Moufakkir, addressed to IPSO dated Aug. 1 and seen by POLITICO, spells out the thinking. In it she stresses that the right of “staff representatives … to address the media without prior approval … applies exclusively to ‘matters falling within their mandate’. It does not apply to the ECB’s conduct of monetary policy, including its response to inflation.” In his interview, Bowles made no reference to current or future policy but rather to a work environment that he said fostered groupthink. Lagarde herself had warned against such risks, denouncing economists the previous year in Davos as a “tribal clique” and arguing that a diversity of views leads to better outcomes. Bowles had made similar statements to the media before, such as in an interview with the Handelsblatt daily paper published in January 2016, without eliciting any reaction from the bank’s management. Contacted by POLITICO for this story, the ECB said it had “stringent measures to ensure analytical work meets the highest standards of academic rigor and objectivity, which are essential to the ECB’s mandate of price stability and banking supervision.” Moufakkir suggested that Bowles’ comments undermine trust in the ECB and that this trust is crucial if the ECB is to deliver on its mandate. “Freedom of expression, which constitutes a fundamental right, does not override the duty of loyalty to which all ECB staff are bound,” she argued. Bowles rejected that framing, arguing in a letter to Moufakkir that he had a “professional obligation” to address such issues and their impact on the ECB’s capacity to fulfil its mission. PAPER TRAIL The trouble, according to the union, is that Moufakkir addressed the first two letters to an individual union representative (Bowles) who was speaking on its behalf, effectively undermining the union’s collective voice.  In her email, the union said, Moufakkir also “heavily misrepresented” Bowles’s comments and accused him of misconduct without affording him a hearing. In her letter from Aug. 1, Moufakkir maintained that her original letter to Bowles “was not a formal decision” to be recorded in his personal file, but rather a “reminder and clarification of applicable rules.”  “Its purpose was not to intimidate or silence Mr Bowles but to highlight to him the importance of prudence and external communications about ECB matters,” she wrote. The union said it sees this framing as an effort by the ECB to shield itself from judicial review: the letter addressed to Bowles was marked ECB-CONFIDENTIAL and Personal, conveying the impression of an official document. According to a person familiar with the matter, a special appeal launched by Bowles to the executive board to retract Moufakkir’s instruction has since been dismissed — without addressing its substance — because the letters had no binding legal effect and were therefore inadmissible. That has now prompted the union to turn to the ECJ; a response to a second appeal by Bowles remains outstanding. The union said that what it perceived as attempts by the ECB to silence union representatives have succeeded: Previously scheduled media interviews have been “cancelled due to fear of retaliation.” When contacted for comment, Bowles declined, citing the same reason. WHAT COMES NEXT? The ECB will have two months to submit its defense to the court. As an EU institution, the ECB is neither subject to German labor laws nor to similar rules in other EU member states and instead enjoys extensive scope to set and interpret its own rules. Out of 91 employment-related court cases since the bank’s inception, the ECB has won 71. Regardless of the legal implications, the union warned that the ECB’s approach undermines its institutional integrity and damages its credibility.  “Silencing staff representatives or whistleblowers prevents legitimate issues from being addressed and erodes trust in the institution,” it said. “Reputation cannot be protected by censorship — it must be earned through sound governance, transparency and open dialogue.” It sees the letter as part of a broader pattern in which the ECB has sought to restrict trade union activity and control staff representation, including planned changes to a representation framework that would limit the participation of union members in the ECB staff committee. IPSO is the sole trade union recognized by the ECB and holds seven out of the nine seats on the ECB’s staff committee, which is elected by all ECB staff. The ECB, for its part, has rejected much of the criticism emerging from survey organized by the union and the staff committee, which showed widespread distrust of leadership, surging burnout levels, and complaints about favoritism. The ECB has called the surveys methodologically flawed and unreliable.

The European Union’s ambassador to Ukraine says it’s time for the EU and the United States to force Russia to engage in peace talks with tough new transatlantic sanctions, following Moscow’s deadly overnight bombardment of Kyiv. Russia unleashed a wave of missiles and drones on the Ukrainian capital early Thursday that killed at least a dozen people and damaged residential and office buildings, including those housing the EU and British delegations. No EU staff were injured. Katarína Mathernová, the EU’s top diplomat in Kyiv, said on Thursday that the assault “flies in the face” of Moscow’s official line that it is open to negotiating an end to the conflict, which it launched more than three years ago. “Everybody sarcastically refers to the attack as Russian peace, Russian-style peace,” she told POLITICO in a phone interview. “Nobody believes that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is committed to peace.” Mathernová added that the EU and the U.S. need to work together to “pressure” the Kremlin to sit down at the negotiating table “in a transatlantic way,” calling for joint sanctions to squeeze Russia’s economy and empty Putin’s war chest. “I think that any sanctions work better if they come from different parts of the democratic world,” she said. “The move by the EU to include the shadow fleet, expand the listings, et cetera, I think actually is biting, but we need to keep at it.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier this month announced that the EU will unveil its 19th package of sanctions against Russia, which is designed “to bring President Putin to the negotiation table,” in early September. The EU has already taken aim at the Kremlin’s energy exports, infrastructure and financial institutions, but has resisted more severe measures, such as seizing Russia’s frozen assets, including €210 billion sitting in the Brussels-based Euroclear securities depository. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump last week set a two-week deadline for Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine or else face “massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both.” The Republican leader this week hit India with steep 50 percent tariffs as punishment for buying Russian oil — though that pales in comparison to the 500 percent tariffs proposed by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on Moscow’s trading partners, which the White House has yet to back. So far, Moscow hasn’t offered any concessions for a peace deal. On the contrary, Putin has refused to back down from his maximalist demands, including that Kyiv give up vast, heavily fortified swaths of land in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and commit to staying out of NATO. “I don’t think we should be waiting for Russia to get interested,” Mathernová said. “I think we need to put pressure on Russia to be interested in these talks.” The seasoned diplomat from Slovakia said that von der Leyen had personally called her to express support for Mathernová and her staff after the attack on the EU delegation building. “People are freaked out,” Mathernová said. “This is true both for expats and for local staff, because one thing is to live here during the war and be woken up by sirens and hear the blasts, but it’s quite another thing when it hits you this close to home.” But, she stressed: “What I want to make very clear is that we are in Ukraine. We are there. We are with Ukraine. We are not going anywhere.”