In the wake of the European Union’s latest espionage scandal, the spokesman for the EP head of the chamber informed on Thursday that the European Parliament will investigate the intolerable and inexcusable state spying on a Greek EU lawmaker in cooperation with Greek authorities.
After the news broke of the illegal tapping of the leader of Greece’s Socialist PASOK party and a member of the European Parliament, Nikos Androulakis, by the state intelligence, the Greek president has called for an investigation.
Juri Laas, the spokesman for European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, stressed that infringements – such as the illegal surveillance of members’ communications – of the principles and values which form the basis of the democratic system are intolerable and inexcusable irrespective of the member state where they occur.
The 705 members-strong European Parliament, which shapes EU policies, already has established a committee that is investigating the use of the Pegasus spyware in the 27-nation bloc that created scandals in other EU countries last year, including France and Poland.
Striving to ban such illegal practices in the EU, Metsola wants the committee to examine the Greek case as well and the Greek authorities have already sent the EP an initial request for information and will share its findings in the coming days.
Metsola is a member of the European Peoples’ Party, the largest European political family, just like the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which is now trying to avoid resignation distancing himself from a growing eavesdropping scandal and insisting that he was unaware of Androulakis’ phone tapping.
Androulakis’ PASOK is Greece’s third-largest political party and the main political rival of New Democracy, Mitsotakis’s conservative party.
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