The Qatar scandal could be “the most egregious case” of corruption Parliament has seen in years, Transparency International chief Michel van Halten told Politico.
The arrests of the Belgian police in European Parliament on the corruption case in relation to Qatar provokes strong reactions in MEPs and non-governmental organizations, as they call for the immediate improvement of the supervisory function and transparency in the institutions of the European Union.
The Qatar scandal could be “the most egregious case” of corruption Parliament has seen in years, the head of MKO Transparency International told Politico. Michel van Halten.
Van Halter commented that the European Parliament has created a “culture of impunity … with a combination of lax financial rules and controls and a complete lack of independent (or indeed any) ethics oversight”.
On his part, Alberto Alemano, professor of law at the College de l’Europe in Bruges spoke of “the most shocking scandal about the integrity of the EU in its history”.
Alemano predicted that this scandal is just the “tip of the iceberg,” hoping that an “accumulation of scandals” would create the right political impetus for an independent oversight system.
On the same wavelength, the German MEP of the Greens Daniel Freudco-chair of Parliament’s cross-party anti-corruption group, described the case as one of “the most serious corruption scandals in Brussels in recent decades”.
The case of funding and bribery against four people from a Gulf state to influence decisions of the European Parliament is “very worrying”, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday.
“Certainly the news is very, very worrying,” Borrell told reporters.
The case of financing and bribing four people from a Gulf state to influence decisions in the European Parliament, “is damaging” for the institution, the Irish Foreign Minister said on Monday Simon Coveney.
“It’s harmful. It needs to be fully clarified,” Coveney told reporters in Brussels.
“It’s a scandal that we need to bring to light to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he added.
The French MEP Manon Aubry (radical left) denounced on Saturday “the aggressive lobbying of Qatar”, and asked for a debate on the matter next week in Strasbourg, where the Plenary of the European Parliament meets.
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