ATHENS — It’s like something out of a crime novel. On an early December morning last year, after months spent staking out residences and tapping phones, Belgian police officers raided dozens of places across Brussels. Over the course of the next three days, in apartments and hotel rooms and offices, they seized laptops, cellphones and approximately 1.5 million euros, or $1.6 million, in cash.
By the next week, four people had been arrested on charges of corruption, including two representatives, one former and one present, of the European Parliament. Antonio Panzeri, a retired parliamentarian from Italy, eventually admitted to being the scheme’s ringleader. Eva Kaili, a parliamentary vice president from Greece, continues to proclaim her innocence from a prison cell. Last month, two other members of Parliament were arrested in connection to the scandal.
As for the cash, all signs pointed to Qatar. Over the previous three years, Mr. Panzeri and Ms. Kaili had delivered one gushing sound bite after another on the Gulf state’s dubious human rights record. In 2019, Mr. Panzeri called the country “a reference” for human rights. In November 2022, one day after the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar, Ms. Kaili hailed it as a “front-runner in labor rights.” Though Qatar denied the allegations, the scandal soon acquired the name “Qatargate.”
The revelations are bad enough. More intriguing is what the scandal reveals about the European Parliament itself, the least consequential institution of the European Union. There is a reason Qatar most likely directed cash at members of a representative body that can propose no legislation on its behalf, commands no foreign policy of its own and garners scant attention even from those who vote it into office.
It was easy and cheap.
The European Parliament may be the only elected body of the world’s second-largest democratic electorate, but its powers have never been very substantial. Since 1958, it has operated on the margins of Europe’s Council and Commission — the two institutions that form the bloc’s executive body — existing largely to amend their laws, approve their budgets and occasionally veto their proposals. It was not, to put it mildly, any grand stage of democratic deliberation.
But by the early 2000s, as the bloc introduced a common currency and began absorbing former Communist states to its east, it seemed possible that the Parliament could evolve into Europe’s answer to America’s Congress: a muscular institution that would supersede local parliaments and draw large numbers of Europeans to the polls.