Federica Mogherini was questioned for around 10 hours by investigators from the European Public Prosecutor's Office in Brussels, from 2:00 p.m. to midnight. Following her testimony, no security measures were taken against the former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who received her passport back and is free to move in and out of Belgium.
According to sources in La Repubblica, Mogherini answered all questions and defended her actions resolutely. Before the magistrates, she declared that the procedures for awarding the European Diplomatic Academy to the College of Europe were “completely transparent” and that “no classified information was used, nor was there any privilege”. She stressed that the sole objective was “to create a better diplomatic class for the European Union”.
Mogherini, who heads the College of Europe in Bruges, is under investigation for how the institution gained control of the EU Diplomatic Academy. Also under investigation are Ambassador Stefano Sannino, Secretary-General of the EEAS, and Cesare Zegretti, the College's manager. All three were arrested on Tuesday, had their immunity lifted and were later released on the grounds that they were not a flight risk.
According to the investigation, Sannino is suspected of having provided the College of Europe with important details of the tender before they were made public, giving them a leg up in preparing the bid. But Mogherini has categorically denied this, stating that all the information was already published and accessible to all competitors. She stressed that even the preliminary discussions between the Commission and the EEAS on the 2021–2022 pilot project were public documents.
A key element of the investigation concerns the purchase of a building on Spanjaardstraat, worth 3.2 million euros, a few months before the tender was announced, at a time when the College was experiencing financial difficulties. Investigators suspect that this action was based on confidential internal information, but Mogherini stated that “there was no secret information to be needed”: according to her, the objectives of the project had been known for a long time and the need for accommodation was clear.
The building is currently used to house participants of the Diplomatic Academy, after the pilot year the European Commission stabilized the program and in 2024 signed a four-year agreement entrusting the College with its full management until 2028. The project has a total value of close to one million euros, of which around 700 thousand go directly to the campus in Bruges.
