(Washington Insider Magazine) – A corruption scandal erupted in December at the very heart of the European Union. Vice-President of the European Parliament, Greek MP Eva Kaili is said to have received large sums of money from Qatar, but it seems that the network of corruption extends much further, taking advantage of the opacity of European institutions. This is an opportunity for the left to develop a radical critique of these institutions and to put forward proposals for rupture.
It was on Friday 9 December that what is already one of the most important cases of corruption ever discovered in the European institutions was brought to light. This was done not far from its nerve center, near the European Parliament, at the home of Eva Kaili, Greek socialist MEP and vice-president of the European Parliament, and her companion, Francesco Giorgi, parliamentary attaché. Fifteen other house searches took place practically at the same time in different districts of Brussels.
Among those arrested to date are the two people mentioned above, but also Pier Antonio Panzeri (former Italian Socialist MEP and current lobbyist for the NGO Fight Impunity), Luca Visentini (recently elected General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation , post of the same order as the one he held until now at the European Confederation) and Niccolò Figà-Talamanca (responsible for the NGO No Peace Without Justice). In recent days, there have been raids on the premises of parliament, with many offices sealed and an as yet undetermined number of deputies, deputies and parliamentary assistants implicated.
The operation was carried out by the Anti-Corruption Unit of the Belgian police, following an investigation that the secret services of this country, in coordination with their counterparts from at least five other European countries, had opened in beginning of 2021. As in many other countries, the Belgian intelligence services are prohibited (at least formally) from investigating political parties or elected officials, unless it is considered that there is a risk for national security. This was the case in this case where it was a question of a supposed “foreign interference” in the legislative decision-making processes.
According The Flemish Daily De Staandard
According to the Flemish daily De Staandard, Belgian intelligence agents entered the home of former Italian MEP Panzeri last July, where they found the sum of 700,000 euros. This discovery triggered an investigation by Belgian justice into what is already one of the biggest scandals in the history of the European institutions. Some in Brussels today remember this month of March 1999 during which the entire executive of the European Commission, led by Jacques Santer, resigned en bloc in the face of various corruption cases.
News of the arrest of Vice-President Eva Kaili and the image of her fugitive father being arrested with sports bags stuffed with banknotes surprised the European Parliament as it prepared to hold its last plenary session of the year in Strasbourg before the Christmas holidays. But beyond this specific episode, what was not so surprising in Brussels Eurocracy circles was the fact that a foreign state (or several) tried to influence the work of MEPs .
About Brussels
Brussels is the second city in the world with the highest number of registered lobbyists. It is not uncommon to see them queuing to enter Parliament, wandering the halls or having coffee with an MP. In the long run, the presence and activity of lobbies in the European institutions have come to be considered normal, in the corridors as well as outside. Today, they are part of the Brussels Eurocracy ecosystem, starting with those who represent private companies. But they are not the only lobbyists.
Diplomatic missions and embassies have been able, at least until now, to escape the attention of the media and public opinion, even as their lobbying activities have gradually increased. In this other category, that of “sovereign” lobbyists, through its aggressive diplomatic intervention in the European Parliament, the Moroccan delegation stands out as particularly active, particularly in its permanent defense and its staging of the illegal occupation of Western Sahara. As we have seen, Qatargate starts in Doha but directly points to Rabat as the real mastermind of the system of corruption in European institutions.
In the current context of crisis of legitimacy and global governance of multilateral organisations, the positions taken, hearings and/or resolutions of the European Parliament on international issues, however declarative they may be, have acquired a significant impact in third countries. This has sparked the interest of many dictatorships, with lots of money and few scruples, to try to use Parliament and MEPs to whitewash their international public image or, at least, to mitigate any criticism that might arise. of the European Parliament. This is how many “friendship groups” of MEPs have flourished in recent years with the rich autocracies of the Middle East or with countries accused of human rights violations such as Morocco or Israel.
Beyond the fact that these groups do not really have parliamentary status, neither control nor electoral legitimacy, the real question is to know what political motivation can a person exercising public office find to be part of a group of friendship with a medieval autocracy that imprisons homosexuals, bans parties and unions, controls women and systematically violates human rights and democratic freedoms? Because there are serious doubts whether the alleged attempts to bribe Qatar or Morocco are limited to a single political group, the Socialists, or just a handful of MEPs. It cannot be ruled out that the ongoing investigation may bring up new names for this institution and other European institutions, in particular the Commission. Indeed, today the spotlight is on the European Commissioner and Vice-President of the Commission, the Greek Margaritis Schinas, who traveled with Kaili to Qatar and who, like his compatriot, has not spared the public praise for the Qatari authorities.
Another sign that this scandal could spread to many other forums is the resounding silence observed by the other major groups in the European Parliament. The European People’s Party has only timidly stigmatized the socialist group as a whole. It may be because he is not sure if he is not involved in this scandal or other scandals under investigation. But also because they are the first interested in not throwing oil on the fire, which could set the common house ablaze today. It is better to point the finger at only a few bad apples than to assume that we are facing a structural problem: an opaque institutional framework, without any citizen control, which favors this type of practice.
A gap now opens for a more substantial battle. Those who have always defended a European federal model, led by a Commission and a Parliament permanently endowed with new powers and prerogatives, have justified this choice by the fact that the European institutions would be a guarantee not only against nationalisms, their selfishness and their warmongering, but also against the corrupt practices that affect traditional nation-states. From Christian Democracy to a large part of the new progressive formations, passing through the Liberals, the Greens and the Social Democrats, such a scandal undermines their legitimacy in designing the construction of the European project. But others, with other intentions, blow on the embers to fan the flame. Orban, for his part, or Le Pen underlined from the beginning of the scandal the hypocrisy of this corrupt “Brussels” which claims to exercise its control over the Member States, as they do by accusing Hungary of corruption and violation of the rule of law.
From the various extreme right-wingers, who sit in the European Parliament, to sectors in the process of radicalization of the European popular family, a mutation has begun in recent years, moving from Eurosceptic positions to a Euro-reformism of a conservative nature: given the of the rise of their influence in the various Member States and in Parliament itself, these forces no longer plan to destroy this EU when they could co-govern it.
But it would obviously be necessary to put an end to the federal formula so characteristic of “progressive neoliberalism”. The EU of the right is the Union of States, the famous “Europe of fatherlands” dear to De Gaulle. It is an intergovernmental model more akin to a United States of Europe than to a European Union of States, a model in which national governments would retain most of the powers and coordinate through the European Council, without giving up their sovereignty to a Commission or a Parliament identified as “European globalism”, a perversion, according to the reactionary International of the Old Continent.
The new booming right no longer wants to break with the EU, nor leave it, but they want to break with the model, hitherto hegemonic, governing the construction of the European project. Their problem is not the EU, but “Brussels”, the European incarnation of the “new world order”, delivered to corrupt and privileged politicians who do not know the reality of the peoples of Europe, totally locked in their Eurocratic bubble. A scandal like Qatargate opens the door wide for them to reduce the prerogatives of the European Parliament and, incidentally, to get rid of those inconvenient devices, such as the resolutions on the emergency situations in the world in terms of human rights, which could upset one of their distant allies. Thus, the EPP proposed once again, during the last plenary meeting in Strasbourg, arguing foreign interference following Qatargate, to put an end to the urgent declarations of human rights adopted by the parliament.
And the left? Well, unfortunately, she has no plans. Certainly, we denounce corruption and we have been at the forefront of the fight against this scandal and others. We are continuing to pull the strings so that this does not remain a matter of Qatar, Morocco and a handful of defendants, but that we denounce the opaque and undemocratic functioning of the European institutions as a whole and an institutional architecture in serving the elites and their interests. However, on the left, we still do not have a clear discourse on what we want and what to do with the EU, whether it is the current one or any other possible one. There are as many challenges as lack of strategy.
That’s why when these kinds of corruption scandals open up opportunities to fight other, more substantial battles, we feel like we’re playing with rigged cards and in a very tight space. We need to discuss a strategy so that every time we score a point, we don’t end up offside. Otherwise, we risk remaining solely at the criticism of corruption, abuse of power and their impunity, but without key ideas for this other possible Europe, apart from a few proposals for practical changes. This is what lobbies demanding transparency or groups like environmentalists are already doing. Qatargate must be used to challenge the undemocratic model of the EU, but also to teach us, the left, so that once and for all we sit around a table to think about what other Europe we want and how to build it.
This article is originally published on contretemps.eu
