A senior European Commission transport official is expected to step down after he made a decision on a free flight to Qatar while his team was negotiating a major aviation deal with the Gulf state.

According to two Commission officials and another person familiar with the matter, quoted by Politico, Henrik Holloway will step down from his post as director general of the Department of Transportation to become a policy adviser in the Commission’s Department of International Relations.

The EU executive has previously said that Henrik Holloway’s travel was within the rules and that all potential conflicts of interest were “carefully considered and ruled out” at the time.

A spokesman for the Commission recently said that these rules mean that Holloway himself is responsible for deciding that his travel does not create a conflict of interest. Under current rules, this is a decision that general managers like Holloway can make on their own, the spokesman said during a press briefing in Brussels.

The Commission stated that it was not aware of any documents in which Holloway justified his decision.

In early March, Politico reported that Holloway, director general of the Commission’s transport department, flew Qatar Airways business class for free nine times between 2015 and 2021, including six times during a critical period when the E.-Qatar treaty was being developed for open sky. Four of these flights were paid for by the Qatari government or a group linked to Qatar.