The arrest of 4 folks in reference to an anti-corruption investigation involving participants of the European Parliament may just shake Brussels to its core.
Some MEPs, together with vice-president Eva Kaili, were accused of accepting huge sums of cash from a Gulf nation reported to be World Cup hosts Qatar. Doha has denied the accusations.
The co-president of the Greens team, Philippe Lamberts, referred to as for a parliamentary inquiry and for the problem of corruption to be introduced up this week on the yr’s closing EU meeting’s plenary consultation.
Niels Fuglsang, a MEP with the Danish Social Democratic Party, pointed to the dangerous impact this scandal may have at the bloc.
“If we can be bought. If members of the European Parliament and other politicians can be bought to say certain things, to vote in certain ways… It’s a disgrace and it makes Europe weaker,” he advised Euronews.
“So, it’s in everybody’s interest that we get to the bottom of this and adopt rules to make sure such things must never happen [again]… That [what happened] is very wrong, and we have a big reparation job to do.”
On Friday, Belgian police staged 16 raids across Brussels. Around €600,000 in cash was seized, in addition to computer equipment and mobile telephones.
Kaili has since been arrested and charged. And she has been stripped of her duties as vice-president of the European Parliament.
Some experts have argued in light of the scandal that the EU should now strengthen its anti-corruption legislation.
“I would believe – and I do believe – that it would be very important that the EU seriously thinks about these questions and prepares itself for situations like this in the future,” Tamás Lattmann, a professional on global and European regulation, advised Euronews.
“[It should] propose some kind of legislation of its own to handle situations like this, and to make the possible cooperation with member-states’ authorities much more seamless and to some extent, more guaranteed.”
Before the scandal broke, the meeting was once making an allowance for visa loose access into the Schengen zone for Qatari voters.
But the European People’s Party, the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens have since referred to as for the suspension of the meeting’s vote at the factor.
