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The European Parliament is reeling from corruption allegations involving the Gulf state of Qatar.
Members’ workplaces have been sealed. Raids have been carried out by Italian and Belgian authorities. And enormous sums of money seized together with sacks of banknotes from the daddy of one of many lawmakers on the centre of the scandal.
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That lawmaker, Eva Kaili, was with the Greek socialist Pasok celebration. She was a vice chairman of the European Parliament — and he or she’d been strongly selling Qatar.
Kaili has now been stripped of her title and is in custody. In fact it’s miles from the primary corruption scandal within the EU.
However on this case there’s the promise of additional lurid revelations of cash-fuelled affect peddling on a a lot greater scale than beforehand thought.
And now the race is on to apportion blame.
Some lawmakers counsel malign overseas interference is principally accountable. Others say non-governmental organisations and marketing campaign teams needs to be within the crosshairs.
Nonetheless others stress that there’ll all the time be dangerous apples and so there needs to be no want for collective guilt in a parliament with 705 members.
However such finger-pointing principally quantities to denial and deflection. That is as a result of the dumpster hearth on the European Parliament could also be largely of the EU’s personal making.
International governments nonetheless can meet lawmakers largely undetected, and there is nonetheless no central unbiased investigator and no system for nameless whistle-blowers.
It is what Transparency Worldwide calls an entire lack of unbiased ethics oversight.
And whereas the EU has many gifted politicians and policymakers who’re above reproach — nonetheless too many are low-grade nationwide celebration hacks and worse.
One of many main voices on making the EU extra accountable and clear is Alberto Alemanno. Alberto is Jean Monnet Professor in European Union Legislation at HEC Paris, and he sits on the board of a number of civil society organisations. He is additionally an excellent sport for taking a scooter by way of downtown Brussels, at the hours of darkness, on an icy night, to return speak about, sure, ‘Qatargate’.
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