BRUSSELS — The European Commission said Thursday it would probe reports that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government deployed intelligence officers to Brussels to gather information on EU institutions and recruit an EU official.

A joint investigation by Germany’s Der Spiegel, Belgian daily De Tijd, Hungarian outlet Direkt36 and others reported that Hungarian intelligence officials disguised as diplomats tried to infiltrate EU institutions while Olivér Várhelyi (now a European commissioner) was Hungary’s ambassador to the bloc.

An operative, who was not identified by the news outlets, was stationed in Brussels between 2015 and 2017 as a diplomat working in the Hungarian embassy’s cohesion policy department, documents reviewed by the outlets showed.

According to the reports, the operative actually worked for Hungary’s foreign intelligence service, cultivating contacts within the European Commission and other EU organizations.

In the European Commission’s press briefing Thursday, spokesperson Balazs Ujvari said: “The Commission takes, as usual, such allegations very seriously and we remain committed to protecting Commission officials and networks from illicit espionage.”

The EU executive “will be setting up an internal group to be looking at these allegations,” Ujvari said, adding that, as a matter of operational security, it would not disclose more information.

The Commission’s chief spokesperson Paula Pinho added that President Ursula von der Leyen had been informed of the reports.

Neither representatives for Várhelyi nor the Hungarian government immediately responded to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

Secret meetings

The espionage activities would be more in line with practices carried out by Moscow and Beijing, than an EU member country. It could fuel distrust of Hungary in Brussels.

The outlets reported that a senior Brussels official said he met the operative every few months for friendly conversations but soon realized the Hungarian was a spy seeking “any kind of gossip” about the Commission.

The meetings, usually held in a Brussels park, eventually resulted in the operative producing a document that would formalize the Commission official as a “secret agent” for Hungary’s foreign intelligence service, the Információs Hivatal (IH) — even as he continued working inside the Commission.

The official told the outlets he didn’t sign the document, and that the operative even offered money for information, which he declined. The news outlets reported that security sources corroborated the official’s account.

At the time, the operative’s superior at the embassy was Hungary’s then-ambassador to the EU, Várhelyi, who now holds the Commission portfolio dealing with health and animal welfare.

Claudia Chiappa contributed reporting.