How the European Parliament is trying to tackle sleaze within its ranks
Last month, the European Parliament's President strode out to a podium in Strasbourg to address the corruption allegations that had rocked the institution and led to the arrest of one of its highest-profile MEPs. "Make no mistake, colleagues, the European Parliament is under attack," Roberta Metsola said, pointing the finger at "malign actors" linked to autocracies. "European democracy is under attack."
However, Ms Metsola's melodramatic defence of the parliament's virtue in the face of alleged foreign agents is looking today shaky as officials across the European Union move to address what is perhaps the root cause of the scandal: the ease with which MEPs can be corrupted by outsiders. With the investigation continuing to throw up new leads, the focus now is on cleaning up the Parliament, seen as the EU's weakest link when it comes to ethics and integrity.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola in Strasbourg (Photo: Yves Herman/Reuters)
The lurid details of the scandal would not look out of place in a rejected Hollywood script.
Six suspects have been jailed, including Greek MEP Eva Kaili, one of the Parliament's 14 Vice Presidents. In raids of various homes, offices and hotel rooms in Brussels, Belgian police recovered more than EUR1.5m (GBP1.3m) in cash, with Ms Kaili's father caught attempting to flee from a luxury hotel with a cash-filled suitcase. The payments were allegedly made by Qatar - hence the 'Qatargate' label hastily used - with the Fifa World Cup host supposedly aiming to secure a visa-free travel deal with the EU.
Qatar has denied the accusations, as have two other countries also mentioned - Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. However, for all the venal outside forces that Ms Metsola evoked, it is the Parliament, the EU's only directly elected institution, that is now facing the toughest questions. MEPs often present themselves as embodying Europe's moral core, but they have long resisted oversight of their work while failing to enforce the few rules already in place.
It was, notably, Belgian intelligence services who uncovered the scandal, not the Parliament itself. For Brussels insiders, this was a scandal waiting to happen. There is an EU transparency register, but few MEPs comply, nor do the companies, industry groups and NGOs.
It recently emerged that multinationals Atos, Dassault and Tesla markedly under-declared their lobbying figures. While MEPs make a gross salary of about EUR9,400 (GBP8,200) a month, they are allowed to hold many other jobs - and a quarter of them do that, according to a 2021 Transparency International EU analysis. "The Parliament has over decades fostered a culture of impunity, through a combination of lax financial controls and a complete lack of independent ethical oversight," says Michiel van Hulten, the director of Transparency International's Brussels office and a former MEP.
The European Commission Vice President, Vera Jourova, says the scandal should prompt Brussels "to do the right thing" by pushing through reforms that include an independent ethics body, bolster transparency regulations and harmonise standards across all arms of the EU. Emily O'Reilly, the European Ombudsman, responsible for probing the EU institutions, blames Parliament's self-policing system. "When rules are not followed, there are few, if any, consequences," she says.
That would be welcomed by many MEPs who see their own hard-earned reputation soiled by the scandal. German Green MEP Daniel Freund, who has long called for a stricter code of conduct, says that it was inevitable that cash-rich countries would try to influence the institution. "There are loopholes and lack of enforcement," he says.
"We need to reform transparency rules, so third-country lobbying should be declared.
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"We need to improve the enforcement of rules as the current self-policing system doesn't work. "And we need MEPs to declare their assets when they come in and when they leave." Mr Freund accepts that this scandal has become a gift to the EU's critics but warns against drawing too many conclusions about inherent corruption in the EU.
While influence-buying may be relatively easy in the Parliament, he says that is the case in many other European legislatures from Britain and Hungary to his own country, Germany.
"We have an MEP in jail right now, and the sums of money involved are frankly peanuts to what is going on elsewhere," he says.