{"id":460981,"date":"2026-07-24T09:23:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T07:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/07\/24\/inchiesta-zapatero-sejourne-la-decisione-ue-sul-salvataggio-di-plus-ultra-non-si-riapre\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:11:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T10:11:18","slug":"zapatero-inquiry-sejourne-says-eu-decision-on-the-plus-ultra-bailout-will-not-be-reopened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/07\/24\/zapatero-inquiry-sejourne-says-eu-decision-on-the-plus-ultra-bailout-will-not-be-reopened\/","title":{"rendered":"Zapatero inquiry: S\u00e9journ\u00e9 says EU decision on the Plus Ultra bailout will not be reopened"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 The investigations concerning the former Spanish Prime Minister Jos\u00e9 Luis Rodr\u00edguez Zapatero<\/strong>, accused of money laundering and influence peddling in connection with the rescue of the airline Plus Ultra<\/a>, do not constitute grounds for reopening cases that the European Commission had already closed. In other words: the green light for state aid approved in Brussels remains unchallenged in the light of these new developments. This was stated by the Executive Vice-President responsible for Industrial Strategy, St\u00e9phane S\u00e9journ\u00e9<\/strong>, in response to a parliamentary question tabled by members of the Spanish right following the legal proceedings currently involving the former Socialist head of government.<\/p>\n

 “The Commission does not currently have any information that would justify
\neither reopening the case or revoking its<\/strong> decision of 31 July 2020<\/a> authorising the
\nrecapitalisation aid scheme in question, the legality of which has been confirmed by the
\nGeneral Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union,\u201d S\u00e9journ\u00e9 said in his reply<\/a>, in which he also rejected the referral of Zapatero to the European Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office (EPPO) and the opening of infringement proceedings against Spain. The reason? There are no grounds for it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“The material competence of the European Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office is limited to criminal
\noffences affecting the financial interests of the European Union,\u201d the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission noted.<\/span><\/span> In the case of the support for Plus Ultra, he stressed. \u201cThe Commission\u2019s decision referred to above specifies that the aid
\nscheme in question has been funded by the Spanish State budget<\/strong>,\u201d and therefore involved no fraud or damage to the EU or its financial interests.<\/span><\/span> \u201cIn these circumstances, the
\nquestion of whether a criminal offence may have been committed does not seem relevant in
\nlight of the ongoing judicial inquiries.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Executive Vice-President of the European Commission says there is no information that would justify this. The conditions for activating the European Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office are not in place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":460935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[32233,26870,26370,35048],"class_list":["post-460981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-sejourne-en","tag-spain-en","tag-state-aid-en","tag-zapatero"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460982,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460981\/revisions\/460982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}