If there is one thing Roberta Metsola is eating away at it is the European Parliament’s reputational damage caused by Qatargate, the conspiracy that erupted late last year to allegedly pay bribes to Members of the European Parliament, preceded by the Chamber’s Vice-President, the Greek Eva Kaili, in custody and several other active MPs under suspicion. “We have to regain trust. A trust that took us 20 years to build and which was destroyed in a few days,” said the President of the European Parliament in an interview he gave to various European media outlets, including EL PAÍS, this Thursday, coinciding with the official presentation of his first 14 rapid implementation actions to “strengthen the integrity, independence and accountability” of the institution.
Despite the arrests and finger-pointing aimed primarily at the S&D, Metsola, whose political family is the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), avoids pointing the finger. “I want everyone to take responsibility. My job is to ensure that this Parliament can pride itself on its integrity, independence and accountability. And that’s what we’re trying to do,” he replies. To this end, he presented these first measures, which he regarded as a kind of “firewall” and which had to be approved as soon as possible. That is why the administrative services will analyze who is responsible for what this Friday in order to distribute the tasks and implement them as quickly as possible.
“I have been given the task of reforming this Parliament”
“I have been given a mandate to reform this Parliament, to analyze the rules, to see what works and what doesn’t, to see what is used and what is not. How to implement [medidas]. This goes beyond self-regulation; We need to realize that we need to step up measures and consider new ones, ”analyzes the president of the institution. And he is confident that the moment is now or never: “I think there is a political will and that we have the drive to create measures or to strengthen them,” emphasizes Metsola, for whom some of the proposals “had years ago are to be made. “
“We’ve made things better, but it’s clearly not enough. I would like to create more firewalls so that at least the alarms go off a little earlier,” insists the Maltese, who took office almost a year ago, on January 18, 2022. A task, she admits, she never imagined at the end of 12 months with a former MEP (Panzeri), a former vice-president of the European Parliament (Kaili) and a parliamentary assistant (Francesco Giorgi) in custody on charges of corruption, money laundering and Involved in a criminal organization after being arrested 1.5 million euros in cash from alleged payments from governments like Qatar or Morocco to influence the agency’s decisions about those countries.
Beyond pleas for Socialist MPs Marc Tarabella (Belgian) and Andrea Cozzolino (Italian), the institution’s president, who says she hasn’t slept “much” in a month because of this scandal, points out that they’re getting nothing has no further requests to have MPs immunity lifted for Qatargate.
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Metsola assures that it will continue to work with the Belgian judiciary while working to improve the transparency and controls of the European Parliament. Something that will imply further more profound and longer-term reforms in addition to the first quick measures, he warns. Like the proposal, also presented this Thursday by the S&D progressives, to create an ethics committee for the EU institutions “before the end of the legislative period” in 2024. By then, Metsola said, the European Parliament must have given clear signals that it is able to live up to the public trust that has eroded Qatargate so badly.
His idea – his wish – is that these first steps be approved as soon as possible. “If I had my way, in a month,” says the 43-year-old Maltese lawyer. You know it won’t be easy. For example, after several drafts, the latest proposal limits itself to proposing an “incompatibility period” for those former MEPs who want to lobby the European Chamber, but does not set times for this as has been the case with previous projects. Despite this, this first point of his plan, according to Metsola, is one of the most hotly debated in the Conference of Presidents, the meeting with the leaders of the European political groups this Thursday, which gave the green light to first and urgent measures. “But it was important for it to appear,” he stresses, and that the first of the 14 goals set was “to restore trust among European citizens” and “the European Parliament as the best example of a modern, open and multinational Parliament to reaffirm parliamentary democracy.” , as stated in the text.
Although his office ensures he has had the political groups’ “full support” for the initiatives, some criticize that the discussion has been “fairly general” and that they have yet to send their input on the proposed measures. These also provide for approving the obligation that any lobbyist, NGO or advocacy group who will attend a parliamentary hearing register in a transparency register and that all MPs publish meetings with third parties related to a resolution or report on their work there should also ban informal “groups of friends” with third countries where the European Parliament already has a suitable interlocutor, or impose a register of entry to the Eurochamber showing the date and reason for the visit.
Metsola would also like MEPs to make a mandatory declaration of potential conflicts of interest before taking on the drafting of a report or resolution for a committee or a specific country, as well as provide more clarity about their income and compel them to report jobs and admit parallel activities his work at the institution.
The Maltese also suggested creating an “integrity seal” on the parliament’s website with detailed information on sanctions, declaration of gifts – officially all MPs with those who exceed 150 euros have to do this, but last year barely a dozen did so, confirms Metsola – or from trips to third countries that are not paid for by the European Parliament.
That last point has led this week to the resignation as President of the Human Rights Subcommittee of Belgian MEP Marie Arena, who has acknowledged that she has not declared a trip to Qatar with flights and accommodation paid for by that Gulf state, although she has made a “mistake” of it attributed to a parliamentary assistant. Although she is not currently facing any formal charges, the Belgian socialist is among the most targeted by investigations since the Qatargate breach due to her closeness to the main accused, former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri. from which he inherited the subcommittee he is now leaving.
Arena was also suspended by the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group, as were other suspected parliamentarians: Belgian Tarabella and Italian Cozzolino. The Belgian judiciary has asked for the immunity of both to be lifted, a process that will start next Monday when Metsola officially announces the request to the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg and is expected to take a month.
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