MEPs have urged intelligence services to publish the names of who was paid by Russia, while pointing fingers at the EU’s far right.
Two French liberal MEPs led the calls for culprits’ names in a plenary debate in Brussels late on Wednesday (10 April).
“We demand the names, the numbers, who was paid, which party, by which intermediary, for which objective, and how much,” said Valérie Hayer.
Nathalie Loiseau said: “the [intelligence] services must make public what they know” before the European Parliament elections in June.
“People have a right to know if they are voting for honest candidates or bought candidates,” she said.
“That elected representatives accepted money from a hostile foreign power is just something else and I’m disgusted,” Loiseau added.
Hayer had called for the debate on Russian interference following revelations by Czech and Polish intelligence services on 27 March that MEPs and MEP-candidates had been paid by Russia to spread propaganda.
The intermediary was allegedly a pro-Russian website based in Prague called Voice of Europe and run by a pro-Kremlin oligarch.
The sums were “tens of thousands of euros”, the Czechs and Poles said, but they did not say who was paid, pending further investigations.
“We will not publish further details for now,” BIS, the Czech domestic intelligence agency, told EUobserver.
A contact from another EU country’s spy service, which is also taking part in the counterintelligence probe, said: “The intelligence services in the Czech Republic and Poland have communicated about this in public … other services involved prefer not to communicate on this topic”.
Hayer and Loiseau’s calls to name names were echoed by centre-right, centre-left, and green MEPs from around Europe on Wednesday.
And suspicion has centred round far-right EU deputies who gave interviews to Voice of Europe, some of whom were present at the debate.
“[Russian president Vladimir] Putin has found links at the heart of our institution, starting with far-right deputies and national leaders, who call themselves nationalists, pretend to defend their countries, but in reality work for a hostile foreign tyranny,” said French socialist Raphaël Glucksmann.
Glucksmann also called out social-media firm X and its owner Elon Musk for continuing to host Voice of Europe content, despite the Czech accusation.
Czech liberal MEP Dita Charanzová said other EU states should follow Prague’s example in taking Voice of Europe videos offline.
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Czech green Markéta Gregorová said knowing that intelligence services were monitoring Russian pay-offs to MEPs made her feel “calmer”.
But she added “we don’t need the Voice of Europe or ID MEPs to show us we have a big effing problem” in terms of Russian hybrid warfare, referring to the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the EU Parliament.
Two of those who gave interviews to Voice of Europe, but who haven’t been accused of taking Russian money, also took the floor to clear their names on Wednesday.
Spanish far-right Vox MEP Hermann Tertsch said former conservative and socialist German chancellors had done more to advance Russian interests in the EU than any far-right MEPs.
He also said the leftwing Spanish government helped Russia via its close ties with Russian allies Cuba and Venezuela.
“I’ve spent 20 years working and 40 years writing against Putin,” Tertsch said.
Marcel de Graaff, an independent Dutch MEP, accused the EU of “violation of Christian rights”, via its support of Covid vaccines and abortion.
But he said “any criticism [of the EU] is demonised,” indicating that his links to Voice of Europe were being used as slurs against him.
The Czech EU values commissioner, Věra Jourová, told MEPs she would crack down on online platforms that spread Russian lies, but said espionage or corruption allegations were matters for individual member states.
MEPs also called for an internal investigation into the Russia revelations, but the EU Parliament can do little beyond imposing a fine on deputies who did not declare payments from third parties.
The parliament found, also on Wednesday, that Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka had breached its code of conduct on declaring income and gifts, following accusations she had worked with Russian spies.
But Ždanoka’s only sanction was to pay a €1,750 fine, the Politico website reported.
