Tag Archives: Daniel Freund

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Daniel Freund

Posted on by
Reply
A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, host Dan Hough interviews welcomes back to the podcast Daniel Freund, a Member of the European Parliament and former Head of Advocacy for European Union Integrity at Transparency International. The interview focuses on different dimensions to the EU’s fight against corruption, beginning with a discussion of the struggle to protect EU institutions from undue influence, a problem illustrated by the “Qatargate” lobbying scandal. The conversation also explores the challenges of building institutional resilience to corruption within potential accession countries as well as EU member states themselves–most notably the question of how the EU should be responding to autocratic regimes like Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations: KickBack was originally founded as a collaborative effort between GAB and the Interdisciplinary Corruption Research Network (ICRN). It is now hosted and managed by the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends!

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Daniel Freund

Posted on by
Reply

A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Jonathan Kleinpass interview Daniel Freund, a German representative in the European Parliament, where he serves on the Committee on Budgetary Control and co-chairs the Parliament’s Anti-Corruption Intergroup. Mr. Freund discusses the risks of corruption (or other forms of misappropriation) of EU funds and how to close these loopholes, as well as the use of conditionalities to promote the rule of law. Much of the interview focuses on the challenges posed by states like Hungary, where the Orban regime’s suppression of media freedom and judicial independence has created a situation in which Orban and his cronies are looting the state and enriching themselves to the tune of over one billion Euros per year, as well as entrenching their own power through a system of favoritism and crony capitalism. Mr. Freund discusses the challenges that the Hungarian situation poses for the EU, and the institutional mechanisms that the EU might use to respond this and similar situations.

You can find this episode here. You can also find both this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.