Last week’s resignation of the British deputy-Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, following a scandal involving her reported underpayment of £40,000 in taxes, may have rocked politics in the UK, but it also shows the high standards that the UK sets for the ethical conduct of its politicians and public servants.
Even in the event of an allegation of misconduct, a politician or senior public servant is immediately at risk of losing their job, often having no choice but to resign from office.
Indeed, while the 45-year-old Rayner was seen by many as one of the most powerful women in Britain, her political career now appears to be tatters. As the old adage goes, the higher they fly, the harder they fall, when it comes to this country’s standards expected of its public figures.
Governance standards in Brussels international ecosystem remain questionable
Turn to the heart of Europe, to the murky world of Brussels’ ecosystem of international government organisations, and how different such standards become. Brussels hosts numerous international bodies established and exclusively financed by the public purse. These range from the behemoths such as the European Commission and NATO, to many smaller bodies which few Brits or Europeans have ever heard of.
One such body is the Energy Charter Secretariat organisation hosted by the government of Belgium, established by the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) of 1994.
In fact, the Charter Secretariat could even be classified as a micro-body by European standards, with an annual budget of EUR 1.4 million in 2025 and just a handful of staff, who we understand are nationals of member countries of the ECT. The ECT has 40 member countries according to the Secretariat’s website, whose governments pay national contributions which comprise the Secretariat’s budget.
The Secretariat’s handful of staff are classified as international civil servants, who we would like to think are subject to similar discipline in ethical conduct to the likes of the UK’s Angela Rayner.
But this is where standards in behavioural conduct of British public servants and their European counterparts start to drift far apart. We have already covered a number of the ‘governance oddities’ at the Energy Charter Secretariat in a recent post entitled ‘Energy Charter Treaty puts life into the Brussels bubble August lull’. Whilst reporting on the contest to appoint a new head of the Energy Charter Secretariat, we highlighted the role of the current head of the body, Ms Atsuko Hirose of Japan, who is fighting vigorously to retain her position.
But now that the outcome of the highly controversial Energy Charter top job race appears to be reaching a climax (it is set to be decided at a governing board meeting of the organisation on September 9th), it is worthwhile to take up the story further.
The bigger the scandal, the harder I stay
Atsuko Hirose is certainly no Angela Rayner. This is not due to the fact that Ms Hirose is 20 years senior to Ms Rayner (Ms Hirose turns 65 on 12 November 2025), or that she lived in London as opposed to Ms Rayner, who hails from Stockport in England’s north. Rather, the difference is due to the manner in which the two women – as politically exposed public figures – react to scandal.
In the case of the UK’s Angela Rayner, immediate resignation followed allegations of misconduct based on reportedly underpaid taxes. Hirose, on the other hand, responded to an Energy Charter Secretariat staff member reporting her for harassment by terminating their employment contract. Another staff member who reported to the police her involvement in illegal recording of the phone calls of staff members, also had their employment contract terminated.
In contrast to British politicians who resign immediately at the first instance of scandal or misconduct, in Ms Hirose’s case, the deeper the scandal or allegations of misconduct against her, the deeper she digs in to ‘hold the fort’. A closer look at the irregularities arising out of the current contest for the Charter Secretariat top job, where incumbent Ms Hirose is one of four candidates, is a case in point.
The irregularities began on July 7, the deadline date for submission of applications by the candidates for the Energy Charter position. While all information about the candidates was labelled strictly confidential and handled by a Management Committee comprised of representatives of ECT member countries, we have since discovered that Ms Hirose had instant access to the applications of her rivals. Emailed correspondence to which we are privy shows the applications of all candidates being exchanged between the Management Committee and the Secretariat, which is currently controlled by Ms Hirose.
Conflict of interest cooked up in Brussels, Japanese style
“If this is not the most blatant conflict of interest, I don’t know what is”, stated one frustrated member of the ECT Management Committee speaking to us anonymously. “Hirose not only had access to the personal application data of her rivals, she used information contained in them to strengthen her own letters lobbying countries to support her bid for the job”, the Committee member added.
But if the UK’s Angela Rayner would have admitted this as deep conflict of interest and resigned from the race, Ms Hirose and her Secretariat only deepened their monkeyshines. On August 7th, three days after ECT member countries sounded out all four candidates in a group interview, the Hirose-led Secretariat circulated a messaged announcing that the deadline for countries to notify the Management Committee of their preferred candidate had been moved forward from August 18th to 13th.
“After this manoeuvre, it became very clear to us that she is controlling the entire contest”, said an anonymous source from one of the ECT member countries. “Moving the goalposts on an existing deadline in a live selection process is unacceptable. It is no coincidence that the majority of countries whom the Japanese convinced to support her, submitted their preference letters on 13th August, the day of the fast-tracked deadline”, the source added.
It is now evident that most of the dozen or so ECT member countries that supported Ms Hirose did not attend the interviews with the candidates on August 4th and therefore did not participate in the sounding out of the candidates. “I am convinced that they did not even evaluate the applications of any of the candidates. They never attend our (Energy Charter) meetings and are invisible in the process. The Japanese (embassy) came to them and asked for support. They never conducted any due diligence on Hirose”, the same source later added.
But here the drama only deepens. Having learned of Ms Hirose’s manipulations of the selection process, on August 14, one of the candidates announced their withdrawal from the contest. The candidate cited deep conflict of interest, shifting deadlines and breaches in the processing of her personal data as the motivation for their decision to withdraw.
This alarmed some of the ECT member countries, since they have a responsibility to ensure compliance and integrity of the selection process. Belgium is particularly worried about the breaches raised by the withdrawn candidate, since it is the country which hosts the Energy Charter Secretariat. Tense exchanges between countries on August 19 followed, during an online Energy Charter conference aiming to determine the outcome for the contest.
“Hirose failed to reach the majority (of the letters of preference) she needed to win outright but still expected to be appointed at the (August 19th) conference. She was very confident going into this meeting”, said one conference participant speaking anonymously.
“Instead, she was exposed for the crook that she is and lambasted strongly for all of her tricks. Countries finally woke up, revolted and even threatened to leave the ECT if she would be reappointed”, added the conference participant.
A little help from Turkey and Switzerland for an old pal from Japan
Interestingly enough, Japan offered little support or defence for Ms Hirose during the August 19th conference when she came under fire from other ECT members. Rather bizarrely, most of her support that day came from a sole Turkish Ministry of Energy bureaucrat who also sits on the Management Committee. “I am totally baffled as to what Reha (Aykul Muratoğlu) from the Turkish government is doing”, added the same conference participant.
“He fiddled with the numbers of letters (of preference by ECT countries) that went against Atsuko, posed provocative questions to Atsuko’s rivals in the August 4th interviews and literally begged the member states to extend her contract, even by a few months, when the members refuted any talk of her reappointment. The guy must have been a used car salesman in his previous life”.
Even more bizarre, a further source of support for Ms Hirose’s campaign has come from Switzerland. More specifically, from a non-senior bureaucrat employed at the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Christian Bühlmann. According to leaked emails, the Swiss bureaucrat has been regularly intervening in the Management Committee in an effort to predetermine the outcome of the selection procedure in Ms Hirose’s favour. He has also blocked any moves by ECT countries seen as unfavorable to the Japanese candidate. This has led to multiple protests from member countries who have alluded to conflict of interest and demanded that the Swiss bureaucrat stays within the boundaries of the rule of law.
The ultimate embarrassment for Tokyo
So this brings right up to the current state of play with all eyes on the next Energy Charter Conference on September 9th as the potential decider for the top job at the Secretariat. But the slap on the cheek she took at the August 19th Conference does not seem to have prevented her from rallying her supporters and pushing hard for a resolution in her own favour.
On September 2nd, she was seen at a garden party at the residence of the Japanese Ambassador to the EU, AIKAWA Kazutoshi, shmoozing with her supporters and taking selfies with the Ambassadors.
Acting Secretary-General with the Ambassador of Liechtenstein
On September 2nd, she was seen at a garden party at the residence of the Japanese Ambassador to the EU, AIKAWA Kazutoshi, shmoozing with her supporters and taking selfies with various Ambassadors.
Yet “Hirose remains under enormous pressure as we come into the September 9th Energy Charter conference to decide on the appointment of the next head of the Secretariat.
“Her own contract expires on September 15th and she is pension-aged. She does not have much else going”, said another diplomatic follower of events.
“She must have promised her Japanese friends at the embassy in Brussels (Counsellor Sato, First Secretary Shibata) a quick and easy victory for Japan. But this is no longer on the table. (ECT member)
Acting Secretary-General with the Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova
“Countries have woken up and also alerted the Japanese to all of her mismanagement of the Secretariat, including the 1 million Euros in litigations filed against the organisation following all of those people that she fired. She has dug the Japanese into a hole and they need an exit strategy”, added the same source.
Another Energy Charter insider added that “the worse-case scenario for the Japanese is that Hirose goes the same way as her predecessor, Masami Nakata.
If she loses, she may even find a way of filing a case against the Energy Charter Conference in the ILOAT in Geneva as a form of revenge, just like Nakata did after her own contract (at the Secretariat) was terminated for misconduct in 2019”, it was further added.
Masami Nakata, the previous deputy-head of the Energy Charter Secretariat, did indeed file several cases against the Energy Charter conference in 2019, in claims exceeding half a million Euros.
Judgement on Ms Nakata’s cases (Judgment Nos. 4612, 4613 and 4614) was rendered in February 2023. “Lets hope that Hirose, if she loses, does not follow the way of Nakata. Two Japanese, two ILOAT litigations against an international organisation where Japan is the largest donor. That would be the ultimate embarrassment for Tokyo”, lamented the insider.
Images: Energy Charter Media.
