International

Three Members of the European Parliament have once again given the institution’s reputation a hard knock. The three agreed to the request of a group of lobbyists to propose and vote for various measures of interest to these lobbyists. In return they would receive sums amounting to €100,000 per year. In reality the people who approached them weren’t lobbyists at all, but journalists from the (British) Sunday Times. Two of the three have since resigned; the third remains in post. The only good news is that there now, all of a sudden, appears to be a chance to put through a number of measures aimed at reducing the improper influence of lobbyists.

You can work extremely hard in the European Parliament, and many of my colleagues do just that, but this sort of scandal makes a much more long-lasting impact than the piles of legislative proposals which we have to vote on every month. So what these three gentlemen did was no small thing. If, as a Euro-MP, you don’t live too extravagantly and you hold on to your generous expenses payments, in five years you can be a millionaire. But for some this clearly isn’t enough. They want a ‘bonus’, even if this comes from criminal activities.

The president of the EP promised this week that he would do everything in his power to force the resignation of the remaining MEP, a Romanian social democrat and former Foreign Minister. That’s possible, because although he’s already been expelled from the Socialists and Democrats group, he can in theory continue as an independent. Corruption is, however, a criminal act, which means that the three have hanging over them the possibility of prosecution in their own countries. It’s probable that the MEP who has yet to give up his seat will be prosecuted, and I’ll certainly vote to lift his immunity and allow a criminal case to be brought against him.

Although everyone in the EP professes to be scandalised that corrupt members are wandering around the place, I am not a bit surprised. As a MEP you can accept any and every gift offered, and I’ve long argued for a Code of Conduct that would change this, and impose for example a limit of €50 on the value of such gifts. Because the president of the EP stated that he wanted to see the Parliament’s rules tightened up, I wrote to him asking that such a binding Code of Conduct be introduced. But we aren’t there yet. It’s time that we denied access to the Parliament’s buildings to unregistered lobbyists, and that too the institution’s president seems to take more seriously than he has done in the past. The SP European group would be pleased to hear that the presidents of the various political groups are talking about this. It’s high time for a thorough spring cleaning in the EP!