The scandal surrounding European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa, and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is intensifying, following the trio’s decision to use a private jet for what would have been a little more than a two-hour drive from Brussels to Luxembourg. As POLITICO reported, the three flew from Brussels to Luxembourg and back aboard a chartered flight to attend an event last Friday.
According to Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho, the decision to charter a flight was due to conflicting schedules among the EU leaders and Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden. ‘The idea was that the three presidents wanted to celebrate Schuman Day together with Prime Minister Luc Frieden in Luxembourg. Due to scheduling constraints for all three presidents and the prime minister, the only travel option that allowed them to attend the commemoration of the Schuman Declaration together was to take a charter flight,’ POLITICO cited Pinho. She added that, despite the significantly larger ecological footprint, the decision was justified as an extraordinary case and the only viable way to ensure their presence.
This is not the first time EU leaders’ use of private jets has drawn criticism in Brussels—particularly as the EU champions green transport and has committed to reducing institutional emissions under its climate goals. In March 2023, German media outlet Der Spiegel revealed that Von der Leyen had taken 57 private flights in just two years.
That same month, POLITICO also reported that former Council President Charles Michel had used chartered air rides for 28 of his 46 foreign trips in 2022, including to the COP27 climate summit in Egypt and the COP26 gathering in Glasgow.
Pfizergate Ruling Ahead
What makes the most recent incident even more uncomfortable for the Commission is that Von der Leyen is currently awaiting a ruling in the so-called ‘Pfizergate’ case by the EU’s Court of Justice. The judgment, expected on Wednesday, could prove reputation-defining.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Brussels signed a €35 billion contract with pharmaceutical company Pfizer for the urgent delivery of 900 million BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine doses, with an option for an additional 900 million. As the pandemic wanes, much of this supply now sits unused in storage, and the EU is desperately attempting to renegotiate terms with Pfizer to halt further deliveries.
Von der Leyen played an unusually prominent role for a Commission President in brokering the deal, having exchanged several text messages with Pfizer’s CEO, as reported by The New York Times in April 2021. In February 2023, the US outlet sued the European Commission for refusing to disclose the content of those messages and related correspondence.
When the Guilty Point Fingers
These two controversies—Pfizergate and the private jet affair—highlight the hypocrisy of Brussels bureaucrats and their allies in Hungary when criticizing the country’s leadership. Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó has repeatedly come under fire for not using commercial flights, even when his diplomatic schedule demands meetings in Washington and Moscow within just a day of each other. Meanwhile, the European Commission’s primary justification for withholding EU funds from Hungary has been the alleged high-level corruption of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.
Yet, recent years have brought scandals that suggest the rot may lie elsewhere—from Qatargate, to the corruption controversy surrounding EPP leader Manfred Weber, and even Pfizergate. These examples increasingly point to a European Union leadership mired in the very corruption it claims to oppose.
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