EU Elections

EUROPEAN ELECTIONS
Momentum
The Qatargate corruption scandal,
which saw a handful of MEPs arrested by
the Belgian police, including parliament
vice-president Eva Kaili, and the seizure
of €1.5m in cash, could have injected
momentum into the EU’s transparency
agenda.
The revelations that Qatar, Morocco and
Mauritania had allegedly bought off a
handful of MEPs and officials for influence
in the parliament to push their interests,
among them to try to water down
EU criticism of Qatar’s record on labour
rights ahead of the 2022 World Cup, and
of Morocco’s human rights record, shone
a light on the easy access to EU lawmakers
enjoyed by foreign governments and
lobby groups, not to mention the importance
such countries attach to boosting
their image in Brussels.
But despite the promises of radical reform,
including a 14-point plan by parliament
president Roberta Metsola to
tackle corruption, the results are less impressive
than the rhetoric.
In 2023, the parliament reformed its
own internal rules of procedure to prevent
special interest groups from hosting
events on the parliament’s premises, a
six-month ban on former MEPs lobbying
their old colleagues, and requirements
for MEPs to record any gifts received or
side incomes above €5,000. By a narrow
majority, MEPs appear to favour banning
themselves from holding second jobs,
though no rules have been adopted to
put this in place.
That may reduce the access of foreign
interests to the EU institutions, but it is
hard to imagine that these rules would
have prevented Qatargate had they been
in place.
Indeed, the fact that none of the MEPs
and officials arrested and charged since
December 2022 are likely to go to trial
before polling day in June suggests that
the Belgian police investigation has also
lost momentum.
Meanwhile, plans for a proposed independent
EU ethics body – demanded by
MEPs in the wake of the Qatargate probe
- have been scaled down to an advisory
body with a skeleton staff and no powers
of investigation.
“The proposal lacks the teeth to apply the
same ethics standards across all EU institutions,”
said Gaby Bischoff, vice president
of the S&D group, describing it as “a
missed opportunity”.
Missed opportunity
It is a similar story when it comes to the
Foreign Agents Law which was finally
unveiled by the European Commission
on 12 December 2023.
Commission officials argue that the draft
law is designed to protect European democracy
by imposing transparency obligations
on funds or links to third countries
on organisations that seek to impact
public opinion and politics.
It would require lobbyists and diplomats
carrying out interest representation activities
on behalf of a third country to
register in a transparency register, with
any payments received and details of
the activities carried out on behalf of the
client to be disclosed on registers that
would be publicly accessible.
Commissioner Jourová insisted that the
directive “is not a foreign agent law”. But
MEPs were largely underwhelmed by its
contents and by the fact that by landing
in December, just six months before the
European elections, the chances of the
file getting approved by both parliament
and Council of Ministers before the EU
institutions go into the pre-election purdah
period were very slim.
Civil society groups, for their part, see
the draft law as a political mistake and
a missed opportunity. They point out
that Georgia and Hungary were urged to
scrap their own foreign agents’ laws by
the EU commission, and that the draft
law, which would give member states
significant room for interpretation when
transposing it into national law, is similar
to Hungary’s law on foreign funding
of NGOs which Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz
government has used to crack down on
critical NGOs and groups promoting LG-
BTQI+ rights.
The law “will not only be ineffective,
but it will also be dangerous,” according
to Transparency International’s Vitor
Teixeira.
“If the commission really wanted to protect
democracy, it would cast the net
wide and raise transparency standards
for all interest representatives — foreign-funded
or not,” he added.
Instead, activists say, the commission
should have proposed a more modest
pan-European lobby register via an ‘EU
Lobby Act’, which would also cover national
lobbying on EU matters. ◄
About
Benjamin Fox
Benjamin Fox is EUobserver’s
Africa correspondent in Nairobi.
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