Annus Horribilis at the European Patent Office (EPO)
The article explains how the EPO "Cocainegate" scandal [1, 2, 3] is turning 2025 into an Annus Horribilis for António Campinos.
2025: An Annus Horribilis at the EPO?
As 2025 progresses through its final quarter it is slowly but surely turning into an Annus Horribilis for EPO management. While EPO President António Campinos is making frantic efforts to cover his tracks with a "reshuffle kerfuffle", EPO insiders are predicting that the fallout from the "Cocainegate" affair is likely to persist and intensify over the coming months and will probably spill over into 2026.
In the wake of the Oktoberfest "Cocainegate" scandal, the only reaction so far from EPO President António Campinos has been to announce a reshuffle in the ranks of his senior management team.
A new Principal Director of Communications and a new Spokesperson have been appointed on an ad interim basis.
Meanwhile the individual who previously held those roles has been "disappeared" from public view and nobody is sure what has become of him.
However, according to EPO insiders his name remains "active" in the internal EPO database.
In other words, he hasn't been dismissed and he is still on the EPO payroll. It's quite possible that he has just been moved aside on a temporary basis while Campinos tries to figure out how he can "rehabilitate" his close confidante and trusted spin-doctor.
As 2025 progresses through its final quarter, there can be little doubt that it is slowly but surely turning into an Annus Horribilis for Team Campinos. Insiders confidently predict that the fallout from the "Cocainegate" affair is likely to spill over into next year.
The fact of the matter is that this scandal comes at an extremely inopportune time for Campinos.
To understand why this is so it's necessary to take a closer look at the arcane and opaque world of EPOnian power politics.
The appointing authority for the President of the European Patent Office is the governing body of the European Patent Organisation — known as the Administrative Council — which is composed of delegates from the Organisation's contracting states. Currently there are 39 contracting states and this number is expected to rise to 41 next year with the accession of two new candidates, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Moldova.
The appointment of the EPO President requires a three-quarters majority of the Administrative Council delegates.
The official decision to appoint Campinos as the successor to the controversial Battistelli was taken and announced by the EPO Administrative Council in October 2017. However, it seems that the appointment had been agreed upon behind closed doors long before that. In fact there was only one other candidate, the Italian judge Cuno Tarfusser, who seems to have been allowed to put his name forward in order to create the illusion of a competitive selection process.
Campinos took up his new position as President of the European Patent Office on 1 July 2018 and from the perspective of the Administrative Council, he sailed through his first five-year term with flying colours.
In July 2022, a year before the end of his term, a decision was taken to reappoint him for a second term without any opposition. That is to say without any perceptible opposition from within the ranks of the Administrative Council. It is true that EPO staff raised their voices in protest but — as is par for the course in the land of EPOnia — the Administrative Council ignored them and proceeded to rubber-stamp the reappointment with little or no meaningful discussion of the matter.
Campinos is now more or less halfway through his second term — which is due to expire on 30 June 2028 — and he is reported to be keen on securing an extension of his tenure for a third five-year term.
The campaign for his reappointment has been gradually gearing up in the background and it was expected to gain full momentum during 2026 and the first half of 2027. All other things being equal, Campinos could have expected to persuade the Council to rubber-stamp his reappointment for a third term by July 2027 at the latest.
But in the wake of the "Cocainegate" scandal all other things are no longer equal.
EPO insiders are speculating that the revelations resulting from the Oktoberfest "drugs bust" may turn out to be a game-changer when it comes to the President's aspirations for an extension of his tenure. In a worst-case scenario — for Campinos at any rate! — the fallout from this incident could derail his carefully crafted plans for obtaining a rubber-stamped reappointment from the Administrative Council.
It remains to be seen whether Campinos will succeed in his efforts to consign this embarrassing incident to the "memory hole" or whether it will continue to dog him over the coming months and perhaps turn out to be the trigger which causes his EPOnian "House of Cards" to collapse.
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