Budapest, Hungary – December 6, 2025 – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched a scathing attack on the European Union on Friday, declaring that Brussels is “drowning in corruption” while continuing to lecture others on integrity. His comments came in direct response to the dramatic detention earlier this week of former EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and two other senior figures in a fraud investigation over a multi-million-euro diplomatic training contract.
“The EU is drowning in corruption. Commissioners face serious charges, the Commission and the Parliament are engulfed in scandal, yet Brussels still claims the moral high ground,” Orban wrote on X. He added that the EU’s criticism of corruption in Ukraine rings hollow when Brussels and Kyiv appear to be “shielding each other instead of confronting the truth.”
The trigger for Orban’s outburst was the Belgian Federal Judicial Police operation on Tuesday, carried out at the request of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). Officers detained Mogherini — who served as the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs from 2014 to 2019 and later became rector of the prestigious College of Europe in Bruges — along with a senior College staff member and a high-ranking European Commission official.
All three were released after questioning but remain under formal investigation for alleged procurement fraud, corruption, conflict of interest, and breach of professional secrecy. The case centres on a €5 million tender awarded in 2021–2022 to the College of Europe to run the EU Diplomatic Academy, a nine-month training programme for junior diplomats. Prosecutors allege that confidential selection criteria were leaked to the College before the tender was officially published, giving it an unfair advantage and potentially costing the EU millions in lost savings.
Mogherini resigned as rector of the College of Europe on Wednesday, stating she wanted to ensure “utmost rigour” in the investigation. The College itself insists it has always applied the highest standards of integrity.
Orban wasted no time linking the Brussels scandal to Ukraine’s own corruption crisis. Last month, Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies exposed a $100 million embezzlement scheme at state-owned nuclear energy giant Energoatom, which generates more than half of the country’s electricity. Investigators allege senior officials and contractors siphoned off huge kickbacks from contracts meant to protect power plants from Russian missile attacks — at a time when millions of Ukrainians are enduring lengthy blackouts.
The fallout in Kyiv has been severe: the Energy Minister and Justice Minister both resigned, a former deputy prime minister faces charges, and President Zelenskyy’s long-time chief of staff Andriy Yermak stepped down after his office and home were searched by investigators.
Orban has repeatedly used Ukraine’s corruption problems to justify Hungary’s refusal to approve new EU aid packages for Kyiv. Brussels, in turn, has frozen billions of euros in cohesion funds to Hungary over rule-of-law concerns.
The Hungarian leader’s latest broadside is likely to deepen the rift between Budapest and the rest of the EU at a particularly sensitive moment. Ukraine’s EU membership negotiations, formally opened in June 2024, are heavily conditioned on credible anti-corruption reforms. Meanwhile, Brussels is under pressure to show that its own institutions are not above the law — especially after the Qatargate bribery scandal that rocked the European Parliament in 2022.
EU officials have declined to comment directly on Orban’s remarks, but one senior diplomat told reporters off the record that the Hungarian prime minister was “exploiting legitimate investigations to undermine the entire European project.”
For ordinary Europeans and Ukrainians alike, the parallel scandals have reinforced a growing sense of frustration: while highlighting the high political stakes: Brussels wants Kyiv to clean house before it can join the club, but the Mogherini case has handed critics like Orban a powerful new argument that the club itself still has plenty of cleaning to do.
