Top EU party spent €100k a month on two consultants – with little to show for it

After nearly 20 years in the European Parliament, German politician Manfred Weber reached new heights of power. 

On 31 May 2022, he was elected president of the biggest pan-European party, the European People’s Party (EPP). 

Speaking to a wide, dark congress room in Rotterdam, the then-49 year old introduced his new right-hand man.

“I am very grateful to present to you today Thanasis Bakolas as our new Secretary General for the party,” Weber said. “Thanasis is an excellent manager, an experienced campaigner, a deep political thinker, and simply a great person.”

Sitting next to Bakolas: Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose centre-right New Democracy party is a member of the EPP.

“Kyriakos, I’m also grateful to you because you give him to the party after 20 years as a political adviser to you,” Weber said.

“It’s quite extraordinary they didn’t investigate this further” 

Bakolas wasn’t the only person close to Mitsotakis who would soon be working for the EPP party: right after the Rotterdam congress, Bakolas hired two one-man consulting firms that were connected to the highest political powers in Greece.  

That would turn out to be a costly undertaking, payment data obtained by Follow the Money shows: the EPP paid the consultancies over half a million euros in six months’ time – despite, according to former staff members FTM spoke with, not seeing a significant boost in performance.

The European Parliament, after being tipped off about the situation, forced the EPP to stop the contracts. 

While the amounts have never been made public, the issue made the news at the time. The Parliament, however, never reported the matter for further investigation, an investigation by FTM and inside story shows. 

“Given the Parliament’s own concerns over the dubious circumstances and extravagant amounts involved in these contracts, it’s quite extraordinary they didn’t investigate this further or immediately refer this to European prosecutors,” said Nicholas Aiossa, the director of the EU office at the NGO Transparency International. “There are a host of unanswered questions on the Parliament’s inaction in this case.”

New kids on the block

Weber has been serving as the leader of the EPP’s political group since 2014: besides a political party, the EPP is also a faction inside the parliament. 

Taking over the helm of the party, he was now consolidating power – and didn’t take long to ruffle feathers by pushing top management out.

Staff were shocked by how, after more than 20 years as secretary general, Weber did not propose Spaniard Antonio López-Istúriz White, for re-election.

Weber and Bakolas also let three additional senior EPP staffers go. 

“Many people were afraid they’d be fired. Someone even had their office packed in boxes,” a former staffer said.

Weber declined to comment.

It was during this tumultuous period that Bakolas brought in two compatriots: Gerasimos Zagoritis and Eric Parks. 

Briefly after the Rotterdam congress, Bakolas introduced Zagoritis and Parks to the team as two experts who would help to improve the EPP’s communications. They were supposed to turn the party into a “communications war room” ahead of the European elections in 2024, two former EPP employees said.

An EPP spokesperson said that the party underwent a restructuring after the 2022 Rotterdam congress. Hiring the consultants had been part of objectives to be “enhancing digital-communication efforts and strengthening ties with national members”.

“Jerry” Zagoritis, 38, is the son of a former secretary general of the New Democracy Party. He had spent six years as an assistant to two New Democracy EU lawmakers in Brussels by the time he joined the EPP party. 

The self-proclaimed “disruption enthusiast” and strategic communications consultant was brought in to help Bakolas navigate the Brussels bubble. Zagoritis quickly became Bakolas’ right-hand man, according to two former employees.

That seems to have been a lucrative business. 

At the end of July 2022, the European People’s Party transferred a generous €58,080 to Zagoritis’ Belgium-based company Campaign Lab.

Monthly payments of €50,820 to Campaign Lab followed, starting in October 2022. These payments continued at least until January, according to documents obtained by Follow the Money, when they totalled more than €260,000.

Zagoritis did not dispute the amounts, and said he did not transfer the money to anyone else. “The compensation received was exclusively for my work and services,” he said. 

Zagoritis described his task as being “the epicentre of the EPP's strategic communication and campaigning”.

Also hired by Bakolas was the now 50-year old Eric Thanopoulos Parks – a Greek-American digital entrepreneur who, as a campaign manager, maintains frequent contact with Mitsotakis.

Parks said that he first met Bakolas ahead of the 2019 Greek election campaign and that, following Bakolas’ election as EPP secretary general, his company – HD Heavyweight – was “invited to submit a proposal for communication and digital services”.

“The EPP needed a significant overhaul of its communication strategy to enhance its relevance and vitality,” Parks said.

Like Zagoritis, the EPP paid Parks’ Cyprus-based company HD Heavyweight hundreds of thousands of euros over the span of half a year: his consultancy pocketed €308,827 until the end of January, the payment data seen by FTM shows.

The party ended up paying most of the consultant fees through its reserves – something a former employee said had never happened before – and drained almost half. 

Working from Greece, Parks held daily online morning meetings with his new communications team. He introduced three more people to the team in Brussels, who also worked from Greece. Parks justifies his high consultancy fees by the fact that he had “at least four individuals working at near- or full-time, with a further three contributing on a part-time basis”. 

But this account is contradicted by two former employees, who said that apart from Parks himself, the three other individuals appeared to do little more than assisting in the calls. 

While allegedly significantly expanded, the output of the new communications team was smaller than or the same as the old team, the employees added. 

According to data seen by inside story, one of the “near- or full-time” staffers was simultaneously employed by private communications firm Blue Skies – a company that employed key figures in the New Democracy communications apparatus.

Another one of them, communications adviser Harry Zarmpalas, was working for a company owned by the Blue Skies’ employee, before being transferred to Brussels in autumn, where he became an EPP employee. 

The third “near- or full-time” employee, Alexandra Gerardi, was simultaneously working as marketing director for Interwood, Greece’s largest wholesaler of wood products, according to her LinkedIn profile and data from inside story. 

Parks declined to comment on the employment status of his collaborators. According to Greek media reports, Parks himself started working for Mitsotakis again in September 2022, during his contract for the EPP. Parks told FTM any work he did for the prime minister was “in a voluntary capacity”.

Lack of scrutiny 

By March 2023, the European Parliament got wind of the situation – and put an end to it.

The Parliament’s department responsible for political party finances had questioned the terms and content of the contracts for the two companies, according to news outlet Euractiv, which reported about the network a few weeks later.

The EPP wanted the entirety of the consultant fees to be reimbursed with EU taxpayer money – but that didn’t work. 

The Parliament found the amounts to be too high and refused to pay back most of it. Instead, it struck an agreement with the EPP party, an EU official told FTM: the money that had been paid to the consultants in July 2022 – more than €110,000 in total – was reimbursed by the Parliament as it could be justified by a party restructuring. The EPP had to cough up the rest of the money paid to the consultants in 2022 (roughly €350,000) from its own pocket.The consultants agreed to pay the money they received in January, February and March 2023 (around €320,000) back to the EPP. The party also terminated the contracts of the consultants. 

Bakolas remained in position as Secretary General until April 2025.

“Although surprised and disappointed, I agreed to a termination of my engagement … and as a commercial gesture … I … reimbursed a part of the fees already paid to me,” Zagoritis said.

According to Parks and Bakolas, the project was already terminated at the end of 2022. Parks also said he had returned the amounts invoiced for early 2023 “as a gesture of goodwill”. 

Bakolas, meanwhile, said the mandate had been withdrawn “after disagreements in the party over maintaining a permanent campaign execution capacity”.

According to an EPP spokesperson, the party’s contracts and tenders are “prepared, organised, and implemented by the party’s experienced finance unit”, and that “these processes are overseen by the Secretary-General”.

Bakolas, the EPP, and the consultants all referred to the multiple internal and external audits the party’s accounts are subjected to. Bakolas said every financial decision taken while he was in office, including Parks’ and Zagoritis contracts, “has been audited by the European Parliament (EP) and deemed legal and proper”. 

Despite being pushed out of the party, the consultants seem to have landed on their feet.

Judging by his LinkedIn activity, Parks stepped up his work for Mitsotakis. In February 2024, he married his team member Alexandra Gerardi – Mitsotakis attended the wedding.

Zagoritis, for his part, is rumoured to be running for Greek Parliament for the New Democracy party, in elections scheduled to take place next year. In the meantime, he still occasionally cooperates with the EPP.

Out of sight

With the consultants having moved on, the Parliament considered the case settled. 

The EPP had planned to have the entirety of the consultant fees reimbursed with EU taxpayer money – but that didn’t work. Still, the backroom deal allowed the centre-right party to keep the affair out of the spotlight.

Apart from an amount of €411,244 of unforeseen costs that were not reimbursed by the Parliament – which, according to two former employees includes about €350,000 that the EPP had to pay from its own pocket – the EPP’s 2022 audit report (signed by Weber and Bakolas) made no reference to the episode with the consultants.

An EPP spokesperson said “the party is committed to the highest standards of financial responsibility and remains fully cooperative with all relevant authorities”.

The Parliament’s secretary general did not mention the case in his 2022 note on European political parties – which informs other political parties of money that had to be paid back – and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) was not informed. Similarly, an authority created to check on the financing of political parties did not investigate whether the consultant fees may have been used to finance the New Democracy party.

“Not reporting it is not a crime in itself, but it may indicate that something isn’t entirely above board,” an expert in Belgian criminal law noted. 

The Parliament did not respond to questions about why the matter had not been reported to other authorities. “At the request of the EPP party and in the context of the preparation of its annual reports, the competent Parliament services provided an opinion on the EU funding eligibility of certain contract-related expenditure,” the spokesperson said.

Louis Drounau, the founder of European Democracy Consulting, which specialises in the reform of European political parties and elections, argued that the financial transparency rules within the Parliament were not strong enough to allow outsiders to probe the issue. 

This makes it, he said, “difficult to understand what exactly happened in cases like these, and to ensure that suspicious transactions are properly investigated”.

Alexander Fanta and Michel Veul contributed reporting

This article was updated on 29.04.2026 at 08:11.