Lobbying scandal forces EU's hand

The European Parliament’s political leadership has approved a plan put forward by parliamentary President Jerzy Buzek, which aims to eradicate corruption among MEPs. According to Rzeczpospolita, the project will be supported by four pillars: an obligatory register of lobbyists (the current register is voluntary), reinforcement of the code of conduct with MEPs to ensure clear rules on relations with lobbyists, a modification of procedures (necessary for the adoption of the new rules) and — last but not least — the establishment of a parliamentary ethics committee.

“As it stands," explains the Warsaw daily, "there is no single organisation that can determine if an MEP has acted unethically." The anti-corruption initiative has been prompted by revelations in the Sunday Times which offered bribes to several MEPS — some of which were gratefully accepted.

Although “Jerzy Buzek has let the EU's anti-fraud office (Olaf) conduct an investigation into the Sunday Times cash-for-amendments scandal. But he continues to deny access to MEPs' offices,” reports EUobserver. The Polish European Parliament President argues that “MEPs must first be stripped of their immunity and that national authorities in Austria and Slovenia should step in to handle criminal proceedings.”

While MEPs Ernst Strasser (Austria) and Zoran Thaler (Slovenia) have resigned in the wake of the scandal, Romania’s Adrian Severin has continued to sit in parliament as an independent. For Revista 22, which cites other cases of corruption in European institutions, the affair is little more than "the tip of the iceberg".

The Bucharest weekly notes that in 2008, one of Germany’s highest ranking European Commission officials, Fritz Harald Wenig, was forced to resign in the wake of a similar Sunday Times investigation, in which "journalists passed themselves off for lobbyists" eager to distribute brown envelopes to eurocrats.

And this is just one in a number of cases: in 2004, Greece’s Kalliopi Nikolaou, who was employed by the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg, allegedly made use of unjustified payments to buy an apartment in London, while in 1999, French Commissioner Edith Cresson had a very close friend in a research job financed by European funds. In short, concludes Revista 22, "Brussels continues to be haunted by the spectre of corruption."