EU member Hungary routinely shared timely updates with Moscow about the bloc’s meetings and helped the Kremlin water down Western sanctions, a new investigation found.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and other outlets obtained recordings of telephone conversations between the countries’ foreign ministers in which Budapest conveyed details of talks in Brussels, and in which Moscow urged opposition to sanctions.
The report also underlines the EU’s own lack of safeguards: The bloc lacks “rock-solid rules on what constitutes secret information and what happens if it’s leaked,” Politico noted. “Every generation has a Kim Philby,” Lithuania’s former foreign minister — whose own EU deliberations were among those passed on to Moscow — told OCCRP. Hungary “is playing the role with enthusiasm.”