The EU’s Mr. Aviation seeks emergency exit

BRUSSELS — Henrik Hololei just wanted to say a big thank you to the airlines.
Through an uncharacteristic stutter in his otherwise keynote-ready bombast, the EU’s aviation chief told the audience of industry figures — with a slight quiver in his voice — how grateful he was for their backing.
At the time, just a week ago, Hololei was still fighting to keep his job as head of DG MOVE, the European Commission’s transport policy department. He was speaking almost a month after POLITICO first revealed that he had accepted free Qatar Airways flights while his team struck an open skies deal with the Gulf state.
The strain was growing. An internal inquiry into his actions was under way following alarm from transparency campaigners and politicians. Commission officials scrambled to tighten the rules on free trips, and there was pressure from some of Hololei’s own colleagues to step aside.
Aviation had been his one true love while in his role, according to advisers and industry executives who have worked with him over the years. And the industry loved him back.
But it was Hololei’s flights that would ultimately end his time atop DG MOVE.
On Wednesday, Hololei said he had decided to step aside, moving into a new post as a political adviser in the Commission’s international partnerships department, or INTPA. Under the job switch arrangement, Hololei will keep his grade and salary but lose management responsibilities and staff, according to a senior EU official.
“I followed the rules that were in force at the time, which have now been changed,” Hololei told the Estonian outlet ERR after his exit was announced.
News of Hololei’s free flights had simply pulled the EU executive too uncomfortably close to the so-called Qatargate corruption scandal engulfing the European Parliament — and the allegations that Qatar had bribed lawmakers. While there is no indication Hololei received similar sweeteners, the Qatar-funded flights came while his team was negotiating a major aviation deal with Qatar — a connection that proved too damaging in the end.
“He’s going because of this,” said a second EU official who worked with Hololei and spoke, like other officials, on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters. “It was exactly the wrong time [with Qatargate], so his flights got a lot of attention.”
Hololei on Wednesday blamed POLITICO’s reporting for driving him out, saying it had become a distraction from his department’s work. “My first priority was to ensure that my directorate-general can work in peace,” he told ERR.
The job swap was an unusual move within the EU, where big civil servant positions are aren’t normally switched so close to the end of the five-year political terms between elections. And it left aviation industry figures bereft.
“Well, everyone in that room will be gutted,” one attendee said Wednesday at the annual gathering of Airlines for Europe (A4E), just as news broke that Hololei was stepping aside.
Since October 2015, Hololei has sat at the head of the EU’s transport lawmaking apparatus. He was, simultaneously, a Brussels schmoozer — regularly found at receptions and after-work events — and one of the EU’s faceless international movers and shakers, meeting ministers and CEOs around the world.
But in a job effectively created to make sure that rules and funding are in place to keep the EU’s trains, boats and planes running, aviation always stood out as Hololei’s passion.
“Henrik was good to us, he was a friend to us,” one airline industry official said on the sidelines of Wednesday’s summit of aviation executives.
Even the harshest critics of the EU’s aviation policy were unusually positive about Hololei himself.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, who has chided the EU for letting governments rescue ailing airlines, positively recalled Hololei’s work after Belarus ordered the hijacking of a Ryanair plane in 2021.
“To be fair to them, the Commission — most notably Henrik Hololei — were terrific,” O’Leary told POLITICO.
In Brussels, Hololei started as the head of Cabinet for then-Commissioner Siim Kallas, the father of Estonia’s current Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, before becoming a major player inside the Commission — described by many as the most powerful Estonian operating in the EU capital.
Many have also suggested he was ready for a tilt at Estonia’s commissioner job following the European election next year, which would have crowned a near three-decade career in EU politics.
Hololei’s career surged ahead during the elbows-out years of Martin Selmayr, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief of staff. As a former Estonian economics minister and early champion of the Baltic state’s EU membership, he’s made friends and enemies along the way.
The senior official cited above suggested Hololei’s political alliances with Finnish officials inside the Commission may have helped him find a new role, given he will be now working for Finnish Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen.
Hololei has also maintained a sensitivity to Russia’s authoritarian politics, which have repeatedly disrupted the EU’s arcane policymaking governing the shipping and aviation industries, even before the Ukraine war.
“Russia ruins everything,” he once told a small group, including POLITICO, at an evening event in Brussels.
Before becoming the EU’s transport chief, Hololei helped coordinate the bloc’s sanctions on Russia as a deputy secretary-general of the Commission following Moscow’s decision to annex Crimea in 2014, herding national interests on everything from Belgian diamonds to German cars in building a package of trade restrictions aimed at curbing Moscow’s expansionist zeal.
More recently, Hololei’s focus on aviation has inevitably led to grumbles that not enough time and legislative energy has been spent on fixing laws that would make train travel, a comparatively cleaner option, easier. 
While the transport brief is not one of Brussels’ high-profile jobs, it is key to the Baltics, where the EU is funding the construction of a massive railway project, dubbed Rail Baltica, that will finally plug the region into the continental European network.
That ties Hololei’s big interests together — Estonia, transport and a desire to counter Russia’s influence in a distant corner of the EU, said a former adviser speaking to POLITICO on condition of anonymity. However, the project is now behind schedule and has burned through several CEOs, leaving some pointing the finger at Hololei.
“This is not his failure,” said a Commission official, who has worked alongside Hololei for years, of the Rail Baltica scheme. “He has put a lot of time and effort into fixing it for sure.”
Internally, some other colleagues have also faulted Hololei over how he handled a rape case he inherited within his department. He could have done more, those critics say, to cut the benefits received by Margus Rahuoja, a former Estonian transport official sentenced to jail over a 2015 assault. Hololei’s defenders argue that his hands were tied by internal management rules.
While Hololei is leaving DG MOVE, he is not leaving the EU scene. “INTPA is actually more prestigious than DG MOVE,” said the second EU official.
As he gets to grips with the EU’s plans for international partnerships, Hololei may even find he needs to travel again.