Despite the Qatargate corruption scandal, the European Commission sees “no grounds” to suspend the EU’s aviation agreement with Qatar, a senior DG Move official told a European Parliament committee on Tuesday.
The scandal has drawn attention to the deal, which gives Qatari Airlines greater access to the European market. The treaty remains in force while it is being ratified by member states, but was voted down by MEPs last month. in order to stop Any law relating to the Arab State while the investigation into possible corruption is ongoing.
Carlos Bermejo Acosta, a deputy director general of the commission, said there was no reason to suspend the provisional application of the deal.
“Have we any ground for considering that it should not be implemented and [be] ratified? We do not see any of these grounds from the Commission’s side. Told Tran Committee of Parliament.
He added that the way the agreement had been negotiated “leaves no room for any speculation about what should not be done,” arguing that EU countries had the power to request the Commission. came to negotiate the deal first.
However, the ratification process is raising eyebrows.
Normally, MEPs agree a position on a file and then reach a final agreement with EU countries before it comes into force, but the Qatar airport deal is different. The agreement replaces a series of bilateral aviation deals between individual EU countries and Qatar, meaning that once the Commission has agreed terms with Doha – which happened in 2021 – it begins to come into force.
This means that Parliament will get nothing until all 27 EU countries have ratified the agreement, something that has been done by only eight EU countries so far; This process can take up to a decade.
It is disappointing MEPs who want to know what happened behind the scenes of the talks.
Renew MEP Dominique Riquet called the process “very, very awkward”.
“I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just quarantine this agreement – as we’ve done with other things – until all the documents and details of the meetings have been declassified, to see if they People who may have been involved on the Qatari side in the scandal and in attempts to interfere with the decisions of the Parliament were actually involved in this agreement, ”renew MEP Ijaskun Bilbao Barandica.
Some MPs also questioned what European and continental airlines actually got out of the deal. Several European airlines have previously said they are unhappy with the plan, which they said favors state-owned Qatar Airways.
Greens MEP Ciaran Cuffe said it could risk unfair competition with the European aviation sector that “domestically is already experiencing a race to the bottom in terms of labor standards.”
But the commission’s Acosta argued that the agreement contained key provisions on issues important to the EU, including competition. He added that if air deals with Qatar continue to be negotiated bilaterally, measures such as “a social clause” will not be included in such smaller agreements.
He said the failure to reach a similar agreement with the United Arab Emirates showed that Brussels had negotiated hard.
“Why don’t we make an agreement with the UAE? He refused. because they didn’t want fair competition [clause], Why? Because they thought dichotomously, they can get the market access they want,” he said.
Greens MEP Karima Daly, who heads the TRN committee and has called for further investigation into the deal, said she planned to invite Acosta back to the committee “to address some of the issues we did not receive clarification from.”