Lionel Barber is former editor of the Financial Times (2005–20) and Brussels bureau chief (1992–98)
There’s nothing quite like a European political scandal involving the Belgian police, an entitled elite and suitcases full of cash.
Katargate implicates a glamorous Greek MEP (one of the 14 vice-presidents of the ridiculously bloated European Parliament) as well as an Italian ex-MEP who heads an anti-corruption group, and various other crimes related to both. are family members. Furthermore, with Qatar hosting the World Cup the police investigation of €1.5 million in cash for favors could hardly have been better served to garner global attention.
Qatargate shows that everything and nothing has changed since another scandal in Brussels 20 years ago: Notorious the cresson caseIncluding a French Commissioner, her sexually aging dentist lover and the misuse of EU funds.
Edith Cresson, a protégé of the late French President François Mitterrand, was known for claiming that one in four Englishmen was homosexual and attributed the economic success of the Japanese to their “ant-like qualities”.
During her tenure as EU Commissioner for Education, Research and Science, which I witnessed, Mme Cresson appointed her personal dentist, René Berthelot, as a highly paid EU consultant on HIV/AIDS, A subject about which he knew nothing.
Berthelot received €150,000 for two years’ work, during which he produced a total of 24 pages of notes, later little or no, according to a report by a committee of wise men appointed by Jacques Santer, president of the European Commission. Judged to be of no value. ,
Santer, an affable Luxembourger who was everyone’s second choice for the job of Commission President, requested the report in response to protests in the European Parliament. Like Captain Renaud in Casablanca, MEPs claim to be shocked at financial mismanagement in their own backyard.
When the Center shrugged off the findings and said the situation was worse in most member states, MEPs threatened to sack the commission. Santer appealed to Paris to throw Cresson overboard, but Prime Minister Lionel Jospin opposed this. In March 1999, the 20-strong Center Commission resigned en masse.
The collapse of the Santer Commission marked an important constitutional moment in the (then) 42-year history of the European Union: an elected assembly helped oust an executive willing to accept collective responsibility for the misuse of public funds. The crisis, some hoped at the time, would allow the EU to rebuild the legitimacy and accountability of its institutions.
Four years before the scandal came to light, Pascal Lamy, who served as chief of staff and enforcer for Commission President Jacques Delors, told me that Parliament is in the best position to play the legitimacy card and force the crisis. Should give. Europe, he said, could no longer be stealthily fashioned by an elite class of bureaucrats.
Dellers’ achievements – the single market, the Maastricht Treaty, the blueprint for economic and monetary union – marked a giant leap forward for integration; But the public and the EU’s own institutions were left behind. Now it was important for the public and institutions to “catch up”.
Fast-forward to Queergate, and it’s clear how much Europe has changed, even if the public is still racing to catch up.
The European Parliament has steadily acquired more powers when it comes to writing and amending EU legislation. True, it does not have the power of initiative, which remains with the Commission, but it is little more than a “traveling circus” between Brussels and Strasbourg.
This change in status suggests that Qatar (and the people of Morocco, who knew something most of us didn’t about the silky skills of their football team) allegedly paid people to promote the world Or handed over large amounts of cash to people associated with Parliament. cup.
Qatar was particularly sensitive to allegations of gross mistreatment of workers and the many deaths linked to the construction of the stadiums. The other point of contact for the media was Qatar’s human rights record, particularly with regard to LGBTQ+ rights.
Eva Kaili, the Greek MEP and vice-president, soon emerged as one of Qatar’s most vocal defenders. But his claim that the Gulf state is “at the forefront of labor rights” after meeting the country’s labor minister was laughable.
More seriously, Kelly showed up at parliament’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee 10 days ago to vote in favor of visa liberalization for Qatar and Kuwait — even though she’s not a member of the committee, as Politico reported.
Such manipulations highlight the extent to which a culture of impunity still exists in some areas of Brussels. The biggest culprit is a self-governing parliament where MEPs can have multiple jobs and double up as lawmakers and de facto lobbyists.
The lack of independent ethics oversight is well-known and reform is long overdue. That will be a task for the new(ish) speaker of parliament, Roberta Metsola, who has promised to “shake up this parliament and this city”.
will point to those with long memories The Cresson Affair, Which dragged on for seven more years. The French establishment closed ranks, and the Belgian courts gave up trying to convict for fraud.
Finally, the European Commission, through former UK Labor leader Neil Kinnock, attempted to secure some redress by stripping Cresson of the €42,300 a year pension. After a two-year legal battle, the Court of Justice of the European Union found Cresson guilty of “a breach of a certain gravity” of Article 213 of the EU Treaty.
But EU judges said Cresson could be paid his pension on the grounds that a verbal reprimand was sufficient punishment: “The finding of a breach is, in itself, an appropriate punishment.”
As a Cresson colleague said at the time: “It’s good, it’s what we expected.”
The more it changes.