Following years of investigation and public protest against the misuse of EU funds and conflict of interest of the Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, the entire European Parliament recommends that he should resign from public office.
Pirates, together with all large European political groups, including Renew Europe, which includes Babiš’ party – ANO, recognize that conflict of interests at the highest level of government cannot be tolerated. This largely supported resolution is an expression of solidarity with Czech people who call for fairness, justice and the incompatibility of business interests with the political power of a Prime Minister.
Members of European Parliament (MEPs) particularly welcome the reopening of the Czech criminal investigation against Babiš and call on the Council to take measures to prevent him from participating in any budgetary decisions. They also stress that Agrofert conglomerate, composed of over 230 companies and still owned and controlled by the Prime Minister and his family, is not entitled to receive any EU subsidies anymore and has to recover independently from the state all misused funds gathered in several EU countries.
Moreover, European citizens’ representatives highlight the importance of upholding independent public media and are concerned by the high concentration of media in the hands of the Prime Minister, who alone owns 30 % of the most important media outlets in the country.
The recent Parliamentary fact-finding mission to the Czech Republic, attended by MEP Mikuláš Peksa, Chair of the European Pirate Party, raised deep concerns about the Czech legal framework, which does not allow the national Supreme Audit Institution and the Supreme Audit Office to function efficiently and autonomously, and which includes inadequately implemented EU Anti-Money Laundering Directives, especially the provisions on beneficial ownership transparency.
The resolution adopted today gathers the Budgetary Control Committee recommendations following the mission, the outcome of several plenary debates on the misuse of EU funds by Babiš, which Pirates participated to, and the previous resolution of November 2018 on conflicts of interest and the protection of the EU budget in the Czech Republic. It is also based the investigation from the European-Anti Fraud Office (OLAF), which reported severe fraud by Agrofert, as the group artificially created a medium-size company to get EU funds and combined its operations to win public tenders.
To avoid oligarch structures drawing on EU funds, we are now asking for more control mechanisms to address conflicts of interests, common ethical standards, increased transparency regarding final beneficiaries, as well as a modification of the agriculture policy to allow for a fairer allocation of subsidies benefitting those that need it the most and not only a select group of political insiders. It is clear to all representatives that it should not be possible to receive over 100 million euros in only three years.
Finally, there are currently still two audit reports being drafted by the European Commission on the misuse of both agriculture and cohesion funds by the Czech Prime Minister. So far, the conclusions from the audit experts were very clear about the presence of a conflict of interest at the highest level of the Czech Government. The Parliament is asking for these reports to be taken into serious consideration by the Council, in the process of negotiating the next Multiannual Financial Framework.
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