{"id":518547,"date":"2025-10-22T02:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T02:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518547\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T02:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T02:49:11","slug":"european-commission-under-pressure-over-hungarian-spying-allegations-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/518547\/","title":{"rendered":"European Commission under pressure over Hungarian spying allegations \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Orb\u00e1n\u2019s political rival, P\u00e9ter Magyar, who also worked at the Hungarian permanent representation under V\u00e1rhelyi, <a href=\"https:\/\/pro.politico.eu\/news\/206598\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">accused him last week<\/a> of holding back information about his time as an ambassador.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my opinion, Oliv\u00e9r V\u00e1rhelyi, the current EU Commissioner and former EU Ambassador (and my former boss), did not reveal the whole truth when he denied this during the official investigation the other day,\u201d Magyar wrote in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a common fact at the EU Embassy in Brussels, that during the period of J\u00e1nos L\u00e1z\u00e1r\u2019s ministry in 2015-2018, secret service people were deployed to Brussels,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n<p>Hungariang government minister L\u00e1z\u00e1r, who oversaw the Hungarian intelligence service while V\u00e1rhelyi worked as ambassador, <a href=\"https:\/\/24.hu\/belfold\/2025\/10\/14\/lazar-janos-kaposvar-brusszel-kem-oroszorszag-forum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said last week<\/a> that although he didn\u2019t recall \u201cthe exact details, my duty is to protect my country,&#8221; adding: &#8220;If Hungarian intelligence had gone to Brussels &#8230; I would honor them, not reprimand them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Track record<\/p>\n<p>The spying allegations also raise the question of why von der Leyen sought to keep V\u00e1rhelyi in place. Several people with knowledge of her support for him say the president intervened to put pressure on MEPs to accept V\u00e1rhelyi as commissioner in 2024, after he was forced to undergo another round of written questions from lawmakers who remained unconvinced.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The president(-elect)\u2019s role is in the process of candidate proposals from the member states, the agreement of the list with the Council, and the presentation of the whole college [of commissioners],&#8221; a European Commission spokesperson said. &#8220;After that it is in the hands of the European Parliament.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orb\u00e1n\u2019s political rival, P\u00e9ter Magyar, who also worked at the Hungarian permanent representation under V\u00e1rhelyi, accused him last&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,140669],"class_list":{"0":"post-518547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-oliver-varhelyi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115415545774292063","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}