Cypriot and unattached Member of the European Parliament, Fidias Panayiotou, went to Moscow for the annual military parade of Victory Day on May 9th. He also met with the Chairman of the Russian State Duma and other Russian members of parliament. Fidias Panayiotou is a vocal supporter of Russia and recently voted against a European parliament resolution demanding Russia to return Ukrainian children it abducted from Ukraine.
We have sent questions to Fidias Panayiotou asking him about the source of funding for his trip. He did not reply to our questions.
We also asked questions to the press office of the European Parliament and we asked whether MEPs are obliged to declare the source of financing for their foreign travel. The EP’s press office replied in the affirmative and said that MEPs are obliged to declare their sponsorships and funding of foreign trips in their official declarations page of the European Parliament. Fidias Panayiotou did not upload the declaration as required.
The “Code of Conduct for Members of the European Parliament with respect to financial interests and conflicts of interest”, which can be found here, also confirms the response of the EP’s press office. If Russia paid for Fidias Panayiotou’s trip to watch the military parade of Victory Day, Panayiotou may have violated the Code of Conduct for accepting a gift or indirect financial support, exactly following a vote that was related to Russia.
However, the Code of Conduct also states that these rules do not apply for reimbursements by third-parties on official parliamentary work. We have sent questions to the EP’s Press Office to understand the definition of official parliamentary work, and we were informed that this work is defined as designated work by the European Parliament and does not include extra0currcular foreign trips at the discretion of the MEP.
Some press reports online state that Panayiotou is being investigated by the European Parliament for his trip to Moscow, but we did not verify these reports yet.
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