London, Wednesday, 14 December 2022
At a press conference on Monday, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen chose not to respond to inquiries regarding the interactions between Margaritis Schinas and Qatar, infuriating the Brussels press corps who were looking for information on the biggest corruption scandal to affect the EU in years.
The Greek commissioner, who represented the EU at the World Cup opening ceremony last month, has come under fire from MEPs over recent tweets in which he praised Qatar's labour reforms.
Von der Leyen remained mute when asked about Schinas, the Greek commissioner, and the Commission's response to the Qatar corruption crisis consuming the European Parliament.
Journalists in the room reacted angrily to deputy spokesman for the European Commission Dana Spinant's decision to end inquiries from the media and demanded additional information.
A reporter protested loudly saying: “You didn’t answer a single one of the questions,”, to get a response by Spinant: “This is not the way to organize a press conference here”.
(Source: Politico // Edit and report by: The Decision Maker – Finance editors)