How Europe reported on the EU-Qatar corruption scandal

The corruption scandal engulfing the EU Parliament “sounds like the plot of a second-rate mafia thriller”, said Barbara Wesel in Deutsche Welle (Bonn).

On 9 December, Belgian police raided several properties in Brussels and seized €1.5m in cash packed in bags and suitcases – allegedly paid by Qatar to buy influence in Brussels.

Along with the cash, police found “jewellery, expensive watches, and hints of luxury vacations sponsored by a Gulf State”. The principal suspect is Eva Kaili, a Greek MEP who started last week – but did not end it – as one of the Parliament’s 14 vice-presidents. She was arrested, along with her partner Francesco Giorgi, an assistant to an Italian MEP; her father – allegedly trying to steal away with a suitcase containing €600,000 – was also detained. /

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‘Queen of Crypto’

Kaili, Giorgi and two others have been charged by Belgian authorities with taking part in a “criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption”. Giorgi has reportedly confessed; Kaili denies wrongdoing; Qatar says the claims are “unfounded”. But whatever happens next, the scandal is a blow to the credibility of the EU Parliament, the EU’s only directly elected body.

Kaili had been enjoying a charmed career until these revelations came to light, said Jorge Liboreiro on Euronews (Lyon). A former TV news presenter, known for her glamorous lifestyle, she served in the Greek parliament as a member of PASOK, the social-democrat party, from 2007 to 2012. And during Greece’s financial crisis, she entered the EU Parliament, going on to earn a generous post-tax salary of €7,146 per month – plus a “monthly general allowance of €4,778 and reimbursed travel expenses”. In Brussels she gained a reputation for being “media-friendly and approachable”, and was dubbed the EU Parliament’s “queen of crypto” for her interest in digital currencies.

However, she raised eyebrows last month, said Oliver Povey on Diario AS (Madrid), with a speech lauding Qatar as a “frontrunner in labour rights” and praising its hosting of the World Cup as a force for positive change. She even accused other MEPs of “bullying” the country. Now, her Brussels office has been sealed up by authorities, and she finds herself at the centre of one of the worst sleaze scandals ever to hit the EU Parliament.

‘Money does buy influence’

Whatever the final outcome, this saga reveals an uncomfortable, if all too familiar, truth, said Alberto Alemanno on Politico (Brussels). “Money does buy influence in the EU.” Long before “Qatargate”, Brussels had been rocked by influence scandals: in 2011, for example, several MEPs had to resign following reports they’d accepted bribes to introduce favourable legislation. And the rules governing MEPs’ conduct remain shockingly “lax”. A quarter of them have second jobs, and most “ethical violations” go unpunished.

It’s disgraceful, said Le Monde (Paris). How is it MEPs are allowed to combine their work in Parliament with roles as “lawyers or consultants”? Why don’t they have to declare meetings with “representatives of foreign states”? At a time when Brussels is desperately trying to present itself as a vanguard of democracy in the face of Russian aggression and a rise in authoritarianism, this state of affairs is inexcusable.

“Every political system has crooks,” said Charlemagne in The Economist. But the EU’s credibility is especially vulnerable to damage from scandal. Its Parliament – home to 705 MEPs and 10,000 staff – “toils in relative obscurity”, rarely registering in the attention spans of those outside the “Brussels bubble” unless it’s engulfed in some scandal. And despite the extra powers it won in 2009, the Parliament’s primary job remains to “provide a veneer of democratic legitimacy to the strange contraption that is the EU”.

Brussels bigwigs know the Parliament must change, said The Irish Times (Dublin): even the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has in recent years backed calls for a new “independent ethics body” to oversee MEPs’ behaviour. But there has so far been a strange lack of urgency in pushing through reforms. That cannot continue. “The longer the EU delays, the more reputational damage it will suffer.”