Money for nothing

Anatomy of a scandal

The arrests of serving and former European Parliament deputies and officials and the seizure of €1.5 million in (alleged) Qatari cash have shocked some, delighted others, and provoked the institution’s president into a warning that "European democracy is under attack”.

My immediate reaction was: Qatar needs to fire its lobbyists.

If these allegations are true, what were they thinking? Which Place du Luxembourg chancer talked them into stuffing a suitcase full of €100 notes for an MEP – never mind for her father, boyfriend, or for a former MEP’s spouse? That Eva Kaili was a vice president means very little; the parliament has 14 of these. She’s no Kamala Harris.

And what are the Qataris supposed to have won in return for their millions? Resistance to a stiffly worded parliamentary resolution urging the emir to implement legislation protecting migrant workers’ rights, strengthen measures to ensure gender equality, and decriminalise homosexuality. All laudable aims but was it worth the (alleged) effort to dilute a wish list without any political or economic leverage? Not that the (alleged) payroll vote stopped it anyway.

Using undue influence to buy a civil-aviation agreement with the EU – as semi-alleged by Karima Delli, chairwoman of the parliament's committee on transport and tourism (TRAN) – would be a lot more impressive. If so, the Qataris were shopping at the wrong institution. It wasn’t TRAN, as Politico reported this week, that “negotiated the deal”. It was, as it always is for anything that matters, the European Commission (the EU’s executive agency) acting under a mandate from the Council of Ministers (the institution representing the 27 member states).

Europe’s parliament has many flaws (expect to see a few here) but its root problem is that it combines minimal political importance and overweening self-importance. Outsiders like the emirate’s ruling cadre aren’t to know that the parliament, although it accrued powers to amend legislation initiated by the commission under a council mandate, is a distant third when it comes to the exercise of real power.

Brussels on €338 a day

It is, however, available. There are 705 MEPs to choose from along with their staff. Beyond involvement in the formal consultation period, influencing legislation in its drafting phase or during the 27-sided negotiations between governments is difficult. It’s easier to wait until proposals get to the parliament, find friendly committee members and write amendments for them. Success is unlikely at this late stage since, once governments have reached an uneasy settlement, adjusting one card can bring the house down. But you look busy and make MEPs feel important.

At least this is tangible legislative activity and partly justifies the cringe-making use of “lawmakers” in every US report on the parliament. Former statesmen with muscle memory of actual power or aspiring national politicians using the parliament as training wheels want their names next to the big issues of the day. In her new memoirs, Catherine Ashton, the former high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy, describes a familiar scene to anyone who has sat through parliament’s proceedings. MEPs, she writes, like making “‘hit-and-run’ accusatory speeches to the hapless commissioner forced to reply to their debates, and then promptly departing to brief the press rather than waiting for a reply”.

Until the parliament was forced to change its rules by a string of embarrassing revelations, you’d be lucky to keep an MEP in the building after such an ambush. Today, MEPs’ €338 daily allowance for attending sessions in Brussels or Strasbourg is only paid if they sign a register, stay for at least four hours, and attend half the roll-call votes. Yet, even now, levels of trust are so low that the parliament’s authorities are considering the introduction of biometric entry-and-exit ID because badges are too easily transferrable.

That’s just the daily allowance, by the way. Gross monthly salaries are €9,386 (€7,316 after 22% EU tax and social security is withheld) and pensions are paid at 63. On top of this, they automatically receive a monthly €4,778 to cover office costs but for which no receipts are required. A 2017 inquiry into “ghost offices” by the MEPs Project found 249 members with no verifiable places of work in return for their €57,336 annual payment. If they lose their seat at the 2024 election, MEPs are paid a transitional allowance equal to their salary for one month per year they were in office.

No wonder a club of Greek and Italian socialists needed (alleged) Gulf top-ups.

Ending the forever midterms

The worst thing about the parliament, however, isn’t its play-acting or the grift of some of its members. It’s that it’s an incubator for the worst politicians in Europe. In almost any out-of-cycle election –  US midterms, French, Spanish, and German regional votes, or Italian municipals – voters protest against national incumbents. It’s how things are. Except for Belgium, where national and union-wide elections coincide, the European Parliament campaign is a midterm everywhere.

Even better, the few voters that turnout don’t know much but they know enough to be comfortable that the parliament’s powers are minimal. They can afford to protest. Better still, even in countries with variations on first-past-the-post systems, these elections are proportional. The result is that Jean-Marie Le Pen, who only ever scraped two years in the national assembly, managed 16 in the parliament. With his daughter at the helm, his movement came top nationally in 2014 and 2019 – the same year Matteo Salvini led the Lega to a crushing 34% win, doubling his score at the national election a year earlier.

By putting together groups of notionally like-minded factions, these leaders get their hands on funding for extra staff and qualify for plenary speaking time, which can be turned into viral YouTube. Diverting the parliament’s generous funds into their parties and using their propaganda platform in Brussels and Strasbourg, they inject themselves back into national politics with none of the responsibilities that local campaigning and messaging require.

This is a deep structural political problem for the EU and, instead of addressing it, heads of state and government have combined avoidance and pandering. Parliament won’t grow into its role by being handed more powers and the public can’t be expected to vote more responsibly if it is. Since the true locus of the EU’s power is in the council, the answer was always to federalise the role of national parliaments – building on the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs (COSAC) – and eliminate the midterm problem.

Until that happy day arrives, authoritarian governments should save their money to build empty stadiums.

This will be my last post of 2022. See you on the other side.