A few months ahead of the European elections, an unprecedented tally reveals the extent to which incumbent MEPs have been accused of breaches of the law and misconduct, including corruption, embezzlement and harassment.
ABOVE: Greek Member of European Parliament Eva Kaili’s lawyers Michalis Dimitrakopoulos and Andre Risopoulos speak to the media, on the day Eva Kaili, former vice-president of the European Parliament, is expected to appear before magistrates in Brussels, Belgium, 22 December 2022
3 February 2024 – – When the Qatargate scandal came to light on December 9, 2022, the very foundations of European institutions were shaken. Eva Kaili, the Greek vice president of the European Parliament, was arrested, along with four current and former members of the parliament, who were suspected of having received bribes from Qatar and Morocco, in exchange for their political support. More than €800,000 in cash was discovered at Kaili’s home. There were viral images of the bundles piled up in a safe, in a Gucci bag, and even in improbable plastic bags – scenes worthy of a Netflix series.
Herein, a few notes from an investigation by Le Monde.
While the Brussels investigation into this case of corruption and money laundering is still ongoing – the accused have denied any wrongdoing – the damage has been done. European elected representatives’ integrity has been questioned, as has oversight of their activities. The European Parliament was not the impregnable fortress that European citizens had a right to expect, but an institution that was vulnerable to corruption and foreign influence. Yet looking beyond Qatargate, what can be said about other MEPs’ compliance with the rules and laws?
An investigation spearheaded by the investigative journalism platform Follow The Money and conducted by a consortium of 24 European news organizations including Le Monde reveals that almost a quarter of the 704 MEPs who are currently in office have been involved in a breach of the law or the violation of a rule.
Corruption, fraud and harassment
A total of 163 MEPs were involved in the 253 cases that were identified and verified, the vast majority of which concerned acts that took place during the current parliamentary term (2019-2024), whether these took place in their country or in the context of their term as an MEP. The cases are of varying degrees of seriousness, covering a broad spectrum from the sale of a stolen cell phone, to the embezzlement of European public funds, and even conspiracy to commit murder. Yet this record figure, which is unprecedented on a European scale, mainly comprises three types of scandals concerning subjects of major public interest: 45 of these cases have been linked to corruption, and in particular outright bribery (sixteen cases reported); 44 linked to fraud, embezzlement, or theft of resources; and 46 to bullying or sexual harassment – a problem the scale of which is under-reported, according to a recent investigation by news website Politico.
How these numbers were compiled
These figures are the result of a meticulous country-by-country statistical compilation of cases involving the 704 currently serving MEPs, as of January 18, 2024. They aggregate all the cases to which MEPs have been linked over the course of their careers, whether in the private or public spheres.
The investigation was coordinated by the Dutch investigative journalism platform Follow the Money, following a tried-and-tested methodology used in the Netherlands for integrity investigations. The methodology counts cases that have resulted in judicial convictions or sanctions of some other kind (such as fines, investigations or reprimands), but also those that have been clearly established by media investigations. The different types of scandal collected include corruption (both bribery and favoritism), fraud and theft of resources, conflicts of interest, improper use of authority, manipulation or misuse of information, waste and abuse of public funds, indecent treatment (ie. bullying) and sexual harassment. Never before had such data been aggregated at the European level.
The results of this investigation represent a minimum tally, as not all scandals are publicly reported, and crimes and misdemeanors are not prosecuted or sanctioned in the same way in France as they are in Hungary, where the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary not respected.
With the European elections just five months away, scheduled for June 6-9, this unprecedented investigation sheds some light on the state of public integrity in Europe. Indeed, European public officials’ behavior – ethical or otherwise – is a subject of major public interest, requiring transparency across the 27-member European Union (EU), in which not all member states have adopted the same standards or invested the same energy in the fight against corruption.
The investigation also confirms that respect for rules and laws is not a value which is uniformly shared by all political parties. While it is impossible to draw up a country-by-country assessment of MEPs’ integrity – given that countries’ different situations in the fight against corruption would distort the comparison – the investigation nonetheless yields a number of political observations.
The radical right is over-represented in the cases
In the Qatargate case, most of the defendants – including Kaili – were linked to the Social Democratic European Parliamentary group. In the overall tally compiled with Follow The Money, however, Europe’s far-right, populist radical right and “illiberal” right-wing MEPs are over-represented, and are particularly involved in the most serious cases as defined by criminal law, and which have been the subject of criminal investigations. They account for 55 of the MEPs implicated in the scandals reported, compared with 42 for the conservative right and 26 for the left and Greens.
Four incumbent MEPs from the Rassemblement National (RN, French far-right) party have been implicated in an extensive scandal regarding fake parliamentary assistant jobs, including the party’s president himself, Jordan Bardella. Also implicated in that scandal are four former RN MEPs, including Marine Le Pen.
All have been suspected of using public funds to pay for assistants of MEPs’ who are reported to have in fact been working for the party, rather than Parliament business – a charge they have all denied. The fraud has been estimated at €6.8 million over eight years, between 2004 to at least 2016. The RN and 27 people linked to the party are scheduled to appear before a French criminal court in autumn 2024. While the RN is not the only French party suspected of such fraud, the MEPs implicated from the MoDem (center) and La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) parties were not re-elected in 2019, and are therefore not counted in the investigation.
The RN is also implicated in another scandal dating back to 2021, which has remained little-commented beyond the European Parliament: The European institution has accused five of the RN’s MEPs (including Jean-Lin Lacapelle and Thierry Mariani) of having been offered luxury trips in exchange for favorable reports on the conduct of elections in authoritarian regimes – in Crimea (following its annexation by Russia) and Kazakhstan.
Foreign influence attempts have become a particularly sensitive issue, in a world undergoing geopolitical reconfiguration, and with an increasing number of conflicts. These MEPs have been sanctioned by the Parliament, which has placed them on its “blacklist” for taking part in “fake election-observation trips” on an all-expenses-paid basis – which now prohibits them from engaging in official election observation missions on the Parliament’s behalf.
An MEP who serves from prison
The Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn – which was dissolved in 2020 after being recognized as a criminal organization – has also been involved in a number of serious scandals. Its former president Ioannis Lagos, who still serves as an independent MEP, votes on texts and participates in parliamentary committees from his prison in Greece. He is currently serving a 13+ year sentence for leading the criminal organization, after it was implicated in the murder of a rapper and anti-fascist activist in Athens in 2013. Because they are elected in their own country, MEPs can only be removed from office by a specific decision of the appropriate national authorities, which the European Parliament has to be notified of – actions which Greece has not done, the institution in Strasbourg confirmed to Le Monde.
Other political groups have not been exempt from breaches of the law or rules. On the right, Italian MEP Lara Comi (Forza Italia, right) was found guilty by the Italian courts of corruption through financial fraud that enabled her to pocket €500,000 in public money. She still holds her parliamentary mandate despite being sentenced to four years and two months in prison in October 2023.
On the left, Greek MEP Alexis Georgoulis is facing charges of rape and assault by the Belgian justice system, which has obtained the waiver of his parliamentary immunity in June 2023. He has been expelled from his party, Syriza, and from the radical left-wing parliamentary group, The Left.
Meanwhile, MEP Anne-Sophie Pelletier, who was elected on the LFI ticket, has been accused by thirteen parliamentary assistants of harassment and abuse. While she was cleared by the European Parliament’s anti-harassment committee in 2021, the LFI delegation excluded her in December 2023 for “harassing, inappropriate and aggressive behavior.” This exclusion has been contested by the MEP, who has filed a libel complaint.
Very few convictions
Nick Aiossa, director of Transparency International EU, the alarming figures compiled in this investigation still understate the reality of the situation. “There is a lot of information, but not publicly available, on MEPs that are not subject to the light of days,” he told Follow the Money. In particular, he said, “Fiddling allowances and expenses is a favorite pastime of many MEPs from many parties”
Should this be seen as a sign of impunity? Not all of these cases have been brought before the courts, and when they have been, 23 MEPs – or 3% of the Parliament – have so far been convicted of the offenses committed. Within the EU, certain countries have continued to be criticized for their weak legislative arsenal for dealing with breaches of integrity, and have sometimes even been suspected of suppressing cases that are considered too political.
Scandals don’t always block the political careers of the elected representatives concerned. For example, far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPĂ–) MEP Harald Vilimsky, who has held a seat in the European Parliament for almost 10 years, has seen his integrity called into question in several cases, including the 2018 “Champagne-Gate” scandal – in which his political group was accused by the European Parliament of having paid for luxury goods, including bottles of champagne, using his parliamentary mandate expenses. In 2021, the European Parliament also lifted his immunity as part of an Austrian judicial investigation into potential irregularities in his party’s expenses. Despite this, Vilimsky will be the FPĂ–’s top candidate for the European elections in June.
A boost for the fight against fraud and corruption
When asked to comment on the results of the investigation, the European Parliament reiterated that it reacted immediately to Qatargate, and has undertaken a number of reforms to strengthen “integrity, independence and accountability” within its institution. The Parliament code of conduct and the rules of procedure which apply to MEPs been strengthened. A spokesperson stated that the Parliament now intends to “proactively monitor compliance, and assessing breaches signaled” to its internal committee, and “aims at an environment of zero tolerance for any instance of corruption.”
Many observers have noted that the creation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which began its operations in June 2021, could boost the fight against fraud and corruption. Tasked with combating attacks against the EU’s financial interests, this new European jurisdiction will bolster the efforts of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), which was set up in 1999 and is limited to conducting administrative investigations.
However, in many cases of integrity breaches, of corruption or of foreign influence, the responsibility for supervision still lies with the EU member states.
NOTE: this article has been published as part of the “MEP Misconduct” collaborative investigation, coordinated by the investigative journalism platform Follow the Money.