“The European Commission has no mandate to investigate, other than to investigate. The Commission, after being published in an Italian newspaper that had its own purpose, saw fit to investigate what we had agreed three years ago when I requested permission to become an honorary member of an NGO committee against impunity, which had a specific purpose and at that time it has done a lot of good work in the field of human rights,” the former commissioner said in an interview with ERT. Dimitris Avramopoulos.

“Pancheri was a big figure in Italy. When it was proposed to me, I did not immediately agree, I asked the commission, the ethics committee, whether this organization was correct and whether it was possible for me to join it and receive a small compensation. The answer came to me in writing. All this time we had nothing to do with Pancheri’s other activities, with what he was doing up and down. If we had taken it lightly, we would have left from the first moment. Over time, when I discovered that the organization was inactive, I asked to stop accruing my payroll,” he said.

Responding to a comment that the salary for honorary participation was relatively high, he said that income is declared in Belgium and taxed in Greece, adding that he is the only one who does not play an institutional and political role. “After I was done with the Commission, I could do other things, and why not. I stopped by myself in February 2022, and at the end, all members of the honorary committee asked that our names also come out, but not under the state of development, ”he said.

“The commission’s mandate is not about research, but about investigation. Lobbying is out of the question,” he said, accusing the Italian newspaper La Stampa, which initiated the reports, of using the opportunity to create some kind of “smoke”, but there is no connection between the issues.