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Lionel Barber is former editor of the Monetary Instances (2005-20) and Brussels bureau chief (1992-98)
There may be nothing fairly like a European political scandal involving Belgian cops, an entitled elite and suitcases filled with money.
Qatargate has ensnared a glamorous Greek MEP (one in every of 14 vice-presidents of the ludicrously bloated European Parliament), in addition to an Italian ex-MEP who heads an anti-corruption group, and numerous members of the family associated to each. Furthermore, the police investigation into €1.5 million of money for favors may hardly be higher timed to catch international consideration with Qatar internet hosting the World Cup.
Qatargate reveals that every part and nothing has modified since one other scandal convulsed Brussels greater than 20 years in the past: the infamous l’affaire Cresson, involving a French commissioner, her sexagenarian dentist boyfriend and misappropriation of EU funds.
Edith Cresson, a protégé of the late French President François Mitterrand, was finest identified for claiming that one in 4 Englishmen is homosexual and for attributing the financial success of the Japanese to their “ant-like qualities.”
Throughout her stint as EU commissioner for training, analysis and science, which I witnessed, Mme Cresson employed René Berthelot, her private dentist, as a extremely paid EU adviser on HIV/Aids, a topic about which he knew nothing.
Berthelot obtained €150,000 for 2 years’ work throughout which era he produced a grand whole of 24 pages of notes, later judged to be of little or no worth, based on a report by a committee of clever males appointed by European Fee President Jacques Santer.
Santer, a genial Luxembourger who was all people’s second selection for the job of Fee president, had requested the report in response to an outcry within the European Parliament. Like Captain Reynaud in Casablanca, MEPs professed to be shocked, shocked at monetary mismanagement in their very own yard.
When Santer ducked and weaved over the findings, saying the state of affairs was worse in most member states, MEPs threatened to sack the Fee. Santer appealed to Paris to throw Cresson overboard, however PM Lionel Jospin resisted. In March 1999, the 20-strong Santer Fee resigned en masse.
The downfall of the Santer fee marked an necessary constitutional second within the EU’s (then) 42-year historical past: an elected meeting helped to oust an govt unwilling to just accept collective duty for the misuse of public funds. The disaster, some hoped on the time, would enable the EU to rebuild the legitimacy and accountability of its establishments.
4 years earlier than the scandal broke, Pascal Lamy, who served as chief of workers and enforcer for Fee President Jacques Delors, informed me that the Parliament was finest positioned to play the legitimacy card and may pressure a disaster. Europe, he stated, may now not be normal by stealth by an elitist cadre of bureaucrats.
Delors’s achievements — the only market, the Maastricht treaty, the blueprint for Financial and Financial Union — marked an enormous leap ahead for integration; however the public and the EU’s personal establishments had been left behind. Now it was very important for the general public and the establishments to “catch up.”
Quick ahead to Qatargate, and it’s clear how far Europe has modified even when the general public continues to be operating to catch up.
The European Parliament has steadily accrued extra powers when it comes to amending and writing EU laws. True, it doesn’t have the ability of initiative, which continues to reside with the Fee, however it’s greater than a “travelling circus” shuttling between Brussels and Strasbourg.
This alteration in standing explains why the Qataris (and the Moroccans, who knew one thing most of us didn’t find out about their soccer staff’s silky abilities) allegedly handed over giant quantities of money to individuals in or related to the Parliament to be able to promote the World Cup.
The Qataris have been notably delicate about fees of gross abuse of staff and a number of deaths linked to the development of stadiums. The opposite touchpoint for media was Qatar’s human rights report, notably concerning LGBTQ+ rights.
Eva Kaili, the Greek MEP and vice-president, quickly emerged as one of the vocal defenders of Qatar. However her declare that the Gulf state is a “frontrunner in labor rights” after assembly with the nation’s labor minister was laughable.
Extra severely, Kaili confirmed up 10 days in the past to vote in favor of visa liberalization for Qatar and Kuwait within the Parliament’s justice and residential affairs committee — although she shouldn’t be a member of the committee, as POLITICO reported.
Such shenanigans spotlight the extent to which a tradition of impunity nonetheless exists in some quarters in Brussels. The most important wrongdoer is a self-policing Parliament the place MEPs can have a number of jobs and double up as lawmakers and de facto lobbyists.
The shortage of unbiased moral oversight is evident and reform is lengthy overdue. This shall be a job for the brand new(ish) president of the Parliament Roberta Metsola, who has promised “to shake up this parliament and this city.”
These with longer recollections will level to l’affaire Cresson, which dragged on one other seven years. The French institution closed ranks, and the Belgian courts gave up attempting to safe a conviction for fraud.
Lastly, the European Fee by way of former U.Ok. Labour chief Neil Kinnock tried to safe some redress by stripping Cresson of her €42,300 a 12 months pension. After a two-year authorized battle, the Courtroom of Justice of the EU discovered Cresson responsible of “a breach of a sure gravity” of Article 213 of the EU treaty.
However EU judges stated Cresson might be paid her pension on the grounds that the verbal rebuke was punishment sufficient: “The discovering of breach constitutes, of itself, an applicable penalty.”
As a Cresson ally stated on the time: “That is good, that is what we anticipated.”
Plus ça change.
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