Welcome to the newsletter of Follow the Money’s EU desk, with insights from our EU specialists, news from the Brussels bubble, and the latest on our investigations!

This week: No records of a closed-door meeting between a top EU official and the CEO of a major bank – just days before new transparency rules take effect. Hungary's use of facial recognition to monitor Pride participants could become the first major violation of the EU's AI Act, and a corrupt official got "proportionate" sanction, the Commission said without elaborating.

Story of the week

New rules on note-taking not a minute too soon

Do you know that old joke? Two high-ranking Dutchmen walk into a meeting. No one takes notes. 

On 11 December 2024, Robert Swaak, then CEO of Dutch bank ABN AMRO, had a meeting with Maarten Verwey, Director-General of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs. 

Follow the Money requested access to all documents related to this meeting, including minutes and e-mails, but the Commission had none.  "While we can confirm that the meeting took place, we regret to inform you that the Commission does not hold any documentation of it," the Commission told me in a letter – signed by none other than Director-General Verwey himself. After we submitted an appeal, the secretariat-general confirmed that the Commission did not have any related documents.

In the meantime, we also asked ABN AMRO about this meeting. Apparently, the bank did have some record of what was discussed. A spokesman told Follow the Money that Swaak and Verwey spoke about priorities in the new Commission mandate, the Savings and Investment Union, and the Draghi report. ABN AMRO said there were no other civil servants or bank employees present. That might explain the lack of Commission minutes. 

But the spokesperson also said the meeting came following an emailed request from ABN AMRO – which means this email correspondence should have come up as part of Follow the Money's access request.

It has previously been reported that the Commission uses a system that automatically deletes emails after six months if they are not proactively registered. But unless the meeting was scheduled more than four months in advance, any related emails should not have been deleted by the time the Commission handled our request.

There have been plenty of meetings with high-ranking Commission officials where no one kept minutes. But that should be a thing of the past.

The meeting with ABN AMRO took place just one week after Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed off on new rules regarding lobby meetings: "Minutes shall be taken of all meetings that Commission staff holding management functions hold with interest representatives." 

Fortunately for Verwey, those rules only apply from 1 January 2025. He has not reported having any lobby meetings since then.

News from the EU bubble

Hungary violates EU's AI Act, leading digital rights organisations say

Hungary's plan to deploy facial recognition technology to identify participants at LGBTQ+ Pride events is "clearly at odds" with the EU's AI Act, according to several leading digital rights organisations. The EU developed the AI Act to regulate the use of artificial intelligence to protect the fundamental rights and safety of citizens. 

In a joint statement issued last week, the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, EDRi, the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law, and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union said that using this biometric technology during "minor infractions" such as protests goes far beyond what is allowed under the EU's law. 

After banning Pride gatherings in March, the Hungarian government doubled down by amending its laws to allow police to use biometric cameras to identify protestors who attend such events.

Hungarian police will now have immediate access to, for example, CCTV footage, which they can compare with government databases, thereby enabling rapid identification during protests, the organisations warned. 

The AI Act limits the use of real-time facial recognition in public spaces, as it involves scanning people's faces without their knowledge or consent – something widely viewed as highly intrusive. The EU law stipulates that such technology may only be used in exceptional cases, such as terrorism, human trafficking, or the search for missing persons. 

The digital rights organisations warned that Hungary's move could have a chilling effect on democratic participation. "When people know they might be scanned, identified and punished for participating in a peaceful protest, many will decide not to attend," they stated.

Their warning comes at a crucial time: the European Commission is currently assessing whether Hungary's plan to use facial recognition technology at LGBTQ+ Pride events is illegal. This could become the first real test case for the EU's AI Act.

Corrupt official got "proportionate" sanction, Commission says without elaborating

On 5 May 2015, exactly ten years ago today, Belgian police searched the Brussels flat of a Greek-Australian woman as part of an investigation into fraud with EU agricultural subsidies. In a bedside cabinet, they found an envelope with "kompromat" on a Greek European Commission official, Giorgios Malliaris. It contained photographs of Malliaris accepting an envelope and a detailed Excel sheet with an overview of €130,000 in bribe payments. Read our 2023 story on the case here.

Ten years later, despite the overwhelming evidence, the case highlights the difficulty of such corruption probes. While Malliaris was initially sentenced to prison in 2021, the appeals court ruled in 2023 that the case was time-barred. Until the start of 2025, he was still receiving his European Commission salary. As a side gig, he authored books on Greek gastronomy. 

This year, the European Commission finally imposed a disciplinary sanction on Malliaris (the administrative probe was on hold as long as the criminal case was still running). But the Commission would not specify the sanction, claiming that doing so would constitute "a breach of personal data." The Commission stated that it had "closed the case, imposing on the staff member a sanction proportionate with the seriousness of the facts." 

Was that a reprimand? Or has he finally been cut from a salary funded by European citizens? And what about his pension rights? His Amazon page still lists him as "working in the European Commission." The public is left to trust in the Commission's supreme judgement… Malliaris and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. 

Our latest investigations

The apps you use might send your data to Israel – raising concerns about surveillance and human rights abuses

The personal data of millions of Europeans ends up in Israel via popular apps – and this is made possible by a decision from the Commission. Despite growing concerns over surveillance on Europeans and human rights abuses on Palestinians, the EU still considers Israel a safe country for personal data transfers.

Read our investigation.

Turkish whistleblower shot dead near The Hague after saying he feared for his life

On Thursday, Cemil Önal was murdered in a suburb of The Hague. He had warned the Dutch authorities that his life was in danger, he told us just days before his death. He claimed to have knowledge of the bribery of Turkish politicians, which, he said, made him a target.

Read our investigation.