An airline lobby group and two labour organisations have appealed to suspend and reassess the European Union's open skies agreement with Qatar after a top European Commission official responsible for the negotiations was fired amid corruption allegations.

The European Network Airlines’ Association, the European Cockpit Association, and European Transport Workers’ Federation said that the sacking of Henrik Holohei, the former director general for transport at the Commission, had "further weakened confidence in the integrity and transparency of the process through which this agreement was negotiated and is being applied."

The groups said that the provisional application of the 2021 agreement should be suspended immediately. The deal is not yet finalised due to the stalled ratification by 12 of the EU's 27 member states, including aviation heavyweights France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The three organisations said "ratification of the agreement should not proceed until a renewed, credible, and transparent process has been ensured."

By EU law, any international agreement has to be ratified by all 27 member states, although exact procedures for the ratification differ between the countries. Nonetheless, the provisions of the EU-Qatar deal are already applied in practice on a provisional basis.

"We urge EU Member States to acknowledge these concerns and withdraw political support for the agreement at this stage, thereby encouraging a reassessment of its continuation under the current conditions," the groups added.

While the deal has been under scrutiny since 2023, when irregularities during its negotiations were first reported by Politico and Libération, a French newspaper, the recent sacking of Holohei gave them new impetus.

Politico reported that the Estonian official was dismissed on January 29, 2026, after an internal investigation found him to be in breach of the rules. He resigned from the position as head of DG MOVE, the Commission's directorate-general responsible for transport, in 2023, but continued to be employed by the institution in other roles. He was sacked for unspecified "administrative infringements", although the Commission did not explicitly link these to the negotiations of the EU-Qatar open skies agreement.

Holohei allegedly accepted free flights and other perks, including free stays in luxury hotels in Doha, from the Qatari side during the negotiations. A European Public Prosecutor Office criminal investigation into the alleged corruption is ongoing.

The EU-Qatar agreement grants airlines certified in either unrestricted rights to launch new flights between each other.