The European Commission has dismissed a translator employed by the European Union to assist during summits due to concerns about possible security breaches.
Politico reported that the European Commission said it took action in connection with an “incident related to note-taking” during the European Council meeting on December 19, 2024, which was attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to Le Monde, which first reported the incident, the interpreter was a freelancer, Ms. I., who was hired to help EU leaders communicate with Ukraine’s President Zelensky.
“Interpreters are not just translators. They are also rare witnesses to secret discussions between leaders. This is a lesson that the European Commission recently rediscovered after an incident that had remained confidential until then, leading it to sanction a Franco-Ukrainian interpreter working for the institution. The events occurred on December 19, 2024, during a European Council meeting in Brussels, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attended,” Le Monde wrote.
The European Commission’s code of conduct prohibits taking written notes during closed meetings that discuss defense and security issues.
These rules were introduced in response to concerns about possible espionage and accidental transfer of information to hostile states, such as Russia.
The notes were seized, and the findings of the internal investigation that followed were forwarded to Belgian law enforcement authorities for further investigation and to determine whether this was a case of espionage on behalf of the Russian Federation.
“The notes were immediately confiscated. After careful consideration of the facts, the Commission took appropriate measures to prevent a recurrence of such an incident. In this particular case, it was decided that the services of this interpreter would no longer be used in the future,” the statement said.
According to Ukrainian media reports, long before the incident at the European Council meeting, Ukrainian diplomatic missions avoided working with a French-Ukrainian interpreter who was caught taking notes of the discussions in violation of the rules.
The media outlets mention that the Ukrainian embassies in France and Brussels had for many years refused to hire the interpreter, referred to as Ms. I., during the visits of the Ukrainian president.
One of the reasons given for this position was that the interpreter “maintains professional relations with representatives of the Russian authorities.” The article does not mention any specific examples of such cooperation.
Ms. I. was not on the official lists of permanent translators at NATO or the French ministries. According to one French diplomat, she was invited by the French Foreign Ministry twice in 2024 to events not related to Ukraine.
She was also occasionally invited by the French representation in Brussels. Representatives of the French authorities, with whom Le Monde spoke while working on this report, assured that they would “draw all the conclusions from the incident.”
As journalists found out, the parents of Ms. I. and her sister, who also became a highly qualified translator, are Russian but lived in Ukraine. Ms. I. completed her studies in philology in Kyiv in 2002 and then studied at the Institute of Translation, Interpreting, and International Relations in Strasbourg.
The sisters have been working as freelance translators for NATO, the European Commission, and French agencies for about 20 years.
Recently, the EU has been investigating several allegations of espionage. The European Commission staff received a warning last year about a “real” threat from foreign agents.
In 2024, the European Parliament sanctioned former Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka after a series of media reports in which she was reported to have been working for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
