Dimitris Avramopoulos stated on SKAI Radio that he had rejected Qatar for visa-free travel, attributing Panzeri\u2019s pressure to the European Parliament rather than the European Commission. <\/p>\n
Dimitris Avramopoulos<\/strong>, speaking on Aris Portosalte\u2019s<\/strong> show on SKAI<\/strong> radio, referred to the Qatargate<\/strong> case and the procedures for reviewing countries\u2019 requests to exempt their citizens from the visa<\/strong> requirement. <\/p>\n As he noted, many countries submit such requests to the European Union<\/strong>, which are reviewed by the relevant European Commission<\/strong>. According to him, when Qatar\u2019s<\/strong> request was under review, as the commissioner in charge, he sent a document rejecting the prospect of its approval. <\/p>\n \u201cI sent a document to Qatar at the time and told them, \u2018Gentlemen, you cannot get this\u2026\u2019 and that was the end of the matter,\u201d he noted. <\/p>\n The former commissioner also claimed that the case was reopened for review by the new European Commission<\/strong>, which took over after the Juncker<\/strong> and was the one that ultimately issued the relevant decision. <\/p>\n Referring to Antonio Panzeri<\/strong>, he noted that \u201che had assembled his own circle\u201d and attempted to exert influence, clarifying, however, that this did not concern the European Commission<\/strong>. In response to a related question from Aris Portosalte about where this pressure was being exerted, the answer was that the target was the European Parliament<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Avramopoulos: \u201cAll these countries are asking Europe to grant visa-free travel to their citizens. The relevant Commission is conducting its investigations. Who was in charge at that time? Mr. Avramopoulos. I sent a document to Qatar at the time and told them, \u2018Gentlemen, you cannot\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/GyhPNYtNGI<\/p>\n \u2014 tomanifesto.gr (@tomanifesto) June 24, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \n Dimitris Avramopoulos stated on SKAI Radio that he had rejected Qatar\u2019s request for visa-free travel, attributing the pressure …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n