Fidias hiring sister may cross EU legal line

Cypriot member of the European parliament Fidias Panayiotou’s hiring of his sister to “help him” in his duties may violate European Union law, it emerged on Monday.

While her role and responsibilities have not yet been made clear, the EU has strict rules on who MEPs can hire to work for them, with close family members banned from being hired as assistants.

“The rules are clear and MEPs may not employ close relatives,” a spokesperson for the European parliament told the Cyprus Mail on Monday.

“Members may not request the recruitment of either their spouses or stable partners or their parents, children, brothers or sisters or, in general, giving rise to any possibility of a conflict of interest.”

However, what is not currently clear is how the rules apply to people who are not formally hired as MEPs’ assistants.

Fidias said in his announcement of his sister’s hiring that “I will employ her with my own money in my private company”, meaning that she will not be employed in an official capacity under the EU’s laws on the matter.

The fact that she has not been hired in an official capacity does not mean that she will not work on matters related to Fidias being an MEP, however, with Fidias in fact declaring the opposite to be true in his announcement.

“She will also be helping me as an MEP because politics is a tough business and you really need to have people [who] care about you and [whom] you can trust,” he explained.

The European parliament’s spokesperson said on this that “the rules are also clear regarding the staff allocated to MEPs in the exercise of their duties”, potentially indicating that people hired outside of those rules may not be allowed to “help” MEPs in their official capacity.

The spokesperson could not be drawn on the individual case of Fidias, though it is likely that the legality or otherwise of his sister’s employment will be clearer as she begins exercising the duties for which Fidias hired her.