For the many critics of the European Parliament, the Qatargate scandal is a monument to a corrupt talking shop. It’s a crude and inaccurate slur. Forty years of EU integration and reform have created a European Parliament far more powerful and influential than any national parliament in Europe.
Yet that work is repeatedly undermined by MEPs, and officials, who simply don’t take themselves or the Parliament seriously enough.
At a hearing on foreign interference in the Parliament yesterday, Transparency International’s Nick Aiossa, a former parliamentary assistant, offered ‘some tough love’.
He said the reforms proposed by Parliament President Roberta Metsola are a decent start but need to be built upon. That should mean mandatory registration for third-country representatives and a Commission proposal for an independent ethics body.
Too many MEPs don’t take their financial declarations very seriously, and the proof of the pudding lies in the flurry of late declarations over the last month, many of them, no doubt, filed by staffers rather than the lawmakers themselves.
Nor are the sanctions for abuse of the very generous MEP staff and office budgets, or harassment of staff, worthy of the name. In the last mandate, 24 breaches of ethics were reported, and no sanctions were imposed. The result, as Aiossa said, is a “culture of impunity” that has been allowed to develop.
Unfortunately, the response from a handful of MEPs on the committee suggested that they were not smart enough to receive the tough love. Daniel Freund, a German Green deputy, opined that more transparency will help in the investigation and the cleanup and is a good thing in itself.
But that wasn’t an opinion held unanimously. Several others argued that Qatargate is just a problem for the Socialist group, while others that more transparency won’t prevent corruption. It’s the toxic mix of complacency and pigheadedness that has brought Parliament into disrepute.
It is, for example, scandalous that the protections afforded to whistleblowers in national governments and agencies in the 2019 EU directive aren’t afforded to staff in the EU’s own institution.
As Aiossa explained, none of the staff regulations for the EU institutions matches the protections in the directive, and the protections offered by the Parliament are the weakest across the EU institutions.
The result is that assistants and staff in the Parliament – whose bosses drafted and voted through an ambitious bill for everyone apart from them – have some of the lowest levels of protection across the EU. Whether or not whistleblower protection would have halted Qatargate in its tracks is a moot point. The point is that it is a loophole that is impossible to justify.
The truth is that Qatargate has done lasting damage to the Parliament’s reputation. If MEPs have any sense they will grasp this and clean up their shop. If they don’t, there won’t be any love, tough or otherwise, for them.
The Roundup
Migration is still a critical concern for the bloc and one where citizens expect a strong response, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged heads of state in a letter on Thursday (26 January) ahead of a crucial leaders’ summit next month.
Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders said the EU executive’s goal is to include the financial sector under the EU rules on corporate accountability after it was carved out from mandatory due diligence by member states in their common negotiating position.
Officials continue to inch towards an agreement on the status of Gibraltar, the rocky enclave at the southernmost tip of Spain, following the latest round of talks in London between officials from the UK, Gibraltar, Spain and the European Commission on Thursday and Friday (26-27 January).
In an exclusive interview with EURACTIV’s media partner EFE, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola reflected on her first year at the helm, and the future of the Parliament post-Qatargate.
The European Commission delivered a presentation, obtained by EURACTIV, to national authorities on the designation of very large online platforms, the governance architecture and an information-sharing system.
Artists’ organisations are preparing a push for regulatory changes over concerns that EU law fails to protect the creative industries from fast-developing generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT.
Don’t miss this week’s Agri Brief: Controlling food prices, and the Tech Brief: EU Council closing in on Data Act, ITU’s Brussels office.
Look out for…
- Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans in Mexico, prepares 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP 28) and meets with national authorities and stakeholders.
- Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski speaks via videoconference with food & agriculture working group of Alliance 90/Greens parliamentary group in German Bundestag on Sunday.
- Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas receives Laurence Boone, French State Secretary for European Affairs, on Monday.
- Agriculture and Fisheries Council on Monday
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald/Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
