Brussels is a city teeming with spies. Russians, Iranians, Israelis, Chinese… They all move about, seeking information within European institutions and NATO, or to obtain intelligence from the hundreds of organizations headquartered in the Belgian capital. Now, a European espionage scandal has rocked the EU and diplomatic circles in Brussels. The European Commission is investigating whether the Hungarian intelligence services worked to recruit a network of spies among European officials. And, above all, whether its current Commissioner for Health and Consumer Affairs, the Hungarian Olivér Várhelyi, was aware of the activities of this network.
Investigators will have to determine whether this network used intelligence agents under diplomatic cover as employees of the Hungarian Permanent Representation to the EU when Várhelyi was its ambassador. The objective would have been to obtain classified documents and sensitive information of interest to the government of nationalist-populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is embroiled in a long-standing dispute with the EU.
The accusations, uncovered by the Hungarian investigative media outlet Direkt36 in collaboration with Belgian and German media, span from 2012 to at least 2018. They focus on Hungary’s representation to the EU, which Várhelyi headed from 2015 to 2019, when he became a European Commissioner (the first for Enlargement and Neighbourhood) and thus secured a significant position within the EU institutions.
The Hungarian government has denied all the accusations, calling them part of a “smear campaign.” But the fact remains that an internal European Commission security team is investigating the case, which EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has taken very seriously. The chief of the EU executive has summoned the Hungarian commissioner, who, for years, has also been, as a good representative of Hungary, the most troublesome commissioner. “The President asked the commissioner if he was aware of the recruitment attempts by Hungarian intelligence services targeting EU staff while he was at the Permanent Representation in Hungary. The commissioner said he was not aware,” a Commission spokesperson reported.
The case has revealed the workings of Hungary’s espionage machinery within the EU, which are sometimes quite clumsy. Direkt36 and its investigative partners recount how agent V., now a lieutenant colonel working in Budapest who in 2015 operated under diplomatic cover in Brussels, contacted Hungarian European officials to try to recruit them as informants.
V., who reported directly to Várhelyi, according to his duties at the diplomatic mission, liked to meet with his potential agents in a Brussels park. “He was a very friendly and intelligent man. I already knew then that he was a Hungarian intelligence officer and that his diplomatic post was just a cover,” one of the affected EU employees told Direkt36.
What he didn’t know was that V. wanted to recruit him. But he tried. And since the spy knew the official wasn’t particularly interested in money, he offered to support one of the organizations that his target collaborated with, and presented him with a contract to sign. The official, uncomfortable, rejected the offer.
Or take the case of E., who arrived as a liaison for the Hungarian intelligence services in Brussels, and who liked to summon European officials to Budapest. “We are both Hungarian, working for the same goals,” he even told a European Commission employee. This official mentioned it to another Hungarian working for the European Commission, and learned that E. had also approached him. Shortly afterward, both were surprised to learn that the Hungarian spy had gone on to work within the European institutions as one of the national experts on secondment. The officials wrote a letter to the Commission’s security department, but nothing was done.
Obtaining information through conversation is legal. But if a diplomat pays for it or gets someone to sign a document (as E. and V. intended to do), they are violating the Geneva Convention, which governs diplomatic relations. “We all assume that countries have spy networks, but for a friendly, allied country to do it is, to say the least, distasteful. And, depending on the case, it can be serious,” says an intelligence source from a European country. “Spying among friends is unacceptable,” Angela Merkel, then Chancellor of Germany, told U.S. President Barack Obama in 2013, after these practices by Washington came to light.
For years, Hungary has not been a friend of Brussels. The government of the national-populist Orbán, considered the closest country to the Kremlin within the EU, has faced serious conflicts due to its authoritarian drift, control of the media and the judiciary, and violations of the rights of LGBTQ+ people. These policies, which run counter to the rule of law in the EU, have also led to the freezing of its European funds.
Hungary’s position within the EU also means it holds few influential positions in EU institutions. Therefore, agents in Budapest were tasked with gathering information to compensate for this lack of influence, according to Direkt36 and its partners. They were instructed to obtain and transmit confidential information—such as meeting minutes, budget data, and open investigations—and also to influence documents and analyses in favor of the Orbán government.
There are reports that Hungarian agents not only spied on the EU in Brussels, but also placed under surveillance the staff of the European Anti-Fraud Office, which was investigating corruption allegations in Hungary against a company owned by Orbán’s son-in-law that was receiving EU funds.
The Hungarian espionage scandal continues to escalate. Now, a group of at least 60 academics from more than 30 countries have demanded answers from the European Commission. They are calling on Ursula von der Leyen to demand Commissioner Várhelyi’s resignation to safeguard “the integrity of the Commission and maintain public confidence in EU institutions,” and to refer the Hungarian to the Court of Justice to request his mandatory resignation and the corresponding sanctions.
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