Last plenary, last scandal? Far-right speaks out

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Welcome to EU Elections Decoded, your essential guide for staying up to date and receiving exclusive insights about the upcoming EU elections. This is Max Griera, writing from Strasbourg. Subscribe here.

In today’s edition

• Espionage and foreign interference scandals are set to flood public debate until and after June’s EU elections as Parliament while Parliament rushes to reform itself – once again.
• Campaign creeps in: Laws and compromises neglected by MEPs as they rush into campaign mode, also leaving debates empty; APAs scramble to find new jobs; Strasbourg becomes France’s campaign catwalk; Sacked Portuguese Socialists shocks S&D.
• MY FAV: The far-right ID group has advice for the next batch of MEPs – do not trust journalists who are nice to you, as they may be on Russia’s payroll.

As June’s European elections draw nearer, espionage and foreign interference allegations have flooded the last plenary session of the European Parliament, but the outrage is likely to continue overshadowing public debate not only during the campaign, but after the dust settles. 

Qatargate, Russiagate, and now ‘Chinagate‘ have all rocked the last plenary session of the Parliament, sending MEPs into a slight panic.

On Thursday, MEPs approved the creation of an EU ethics body, conceptualised in the wake of the QatarGate scandal, which aims at preventing wrongdoing by elected or appointed officials by standardising and monitoring ethical guidelines across EU institutions.

However, an ethics body with no sanctioning powers is hardly a solution.

“We really have to be honest to ourselves. (…) Even if all of these allegations are true, these are criminal offences, and these are offences that are punished with prison sentences, so if people are ready to violate criminal law and face a prison sentence, you won’t keep them by installing an ethics body or ethics rules or anything like that. We must face that.” Vice-President of the Parliament and German Socialist leading MEP Katarina Barley told Euractiv. 

While the cases are still in the hands of judicial authorities, disturbed lawmakers have rushed to call for further internal reforms to strengthen security despite recently approving a watered-down reform post-QatarGate in September 2023.

Now, MEPs are calling again for heightened security clearance for staff, politicians, and journalists—but their outcry will fall on deaf ears, at least until July, as the Parliament is set to wrap up its work this week.

But the noise around the cases is set to continue as more information and details are expected to emerge.

Meanwhile, political forces from EU countries where far-right forces are on the rise will certainly use them as campaign ammunition. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who is at the forefront of battling Russian interference, is facing a tough battle against Vlaams Belang ahead of national, local, and European elections. 

Interestingly enough, one of the first tasks from the fresh new batch of MEPs in July could be to strip some of their colleagues’ immunities on their first day.

Waiting for the next cliff

Tobias Teuscher, spokesperson of ID group which is at the epicentre of the recent scandals, did not want to speculate on potential new cases within his ranks: “You never know,” he told Euractiv. 

“We are navigating like in a ship with fog around, and we don’t know exactly where the next cliff will come up suddenly,” he added.

He argued that ID MEPs had been fooled by Voice of Europe, the epicentre of the recently-revealed Russian propaganda network, as they appeared on their website abundantly.

“The success of Voice of Europe is certainly that they’re playing the game of the nice guy. As a politician, you are used to having only nasty questions from journalists who are only having the agenda to harm you.”

“Then you are in a certain way very happy if you have a media that comes and is not nasty,” he added.

The best advice to the next batch of MEPs is that if journalists are nice to you, be wary; they may be on Russia, or maybe even China’s payroll.

Campaigning floods last plenary session

“Are you ready for campaigning after you leave this week? If you think so, you vote yes, and if not, we will see. So the vote is open.” That is how S&D Vice-President Gabriele Bischoff, echoing everyone’s feelings during the plenary, opened the voting time during the last constitutional affairs committee meeting on Monday when MEPs rubber-stamped their commitment to creating an EU ethics body. Of course, all lawmakers cheered, and a majority voted in favour.

Ghost town. But the cheering sheds light on a sad truth. MEPs seem to have cared less about their work in the last month, especially this last plenary session, as they rush back to their countries to campaign on the ground. Many lawmakers just attended the voting sessions, leaving immediately to continue their campaign preparations. This led to all the pathetically empty—more than usual—debates throughout the week: von der Leyen’s address and the 20th anniversary of the 2004 enlargement, among others. Check by yourself here.

Nothing matters anymore? “We have been feeling that for a month now, that more and more the election campaign is creeping into our work, where before, you know, we were negotiating on the content of files, and all of a sudden, what actually is written in the law or in the compromises doesn’t really matter anymore,” Green MEP Daniel Freund told Euractiv, who rushed to Stuttgart on Tuesday evening for a rally and came back the morning after to continue his work.

… who let the doves out? The emptiness would have made many cry if not for Slovak MEP Miroslav Radacovsky, who cheered everyone up by sneaking in a dove in the hemicycle and releasing it during his speech, calling for peace in Ukraine. 

The French catwalk. Strasbourg became the catwalk for France’s campaigning this week, with Socialist leader Raphael Glucksman, Left’s Manon Aubry, and President Emmanuel Macron all holding events in the city. The French liberal EU chief, Valérie Hayer, left the plenary as she rushed to a campaign event in Paris on Monday. 

MEP assistants rushing to campaign, find new jobs. MEP assistants (APAs) have also started campaign preparations, while the ones that will become jobless after June have started circulating CVs around and knocking at candidates’ doors. APAs have a contract until 15th of July, but many of them will take days off to campaign with their boss as they are not allowed to do so during working hours – in theory.

Socialists in shock with Portugal’s sacking of current MEPs. Socialist MEPs were scandalised on Monday evening by the unexpected news that their Portuguese colleagues had been sacked en masse by Portugal’s Socialist leader, Pedro Nuno Santos. In a sour tweet, former Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who picked the outgoing team, expressed it “will be a great challenge for whoever succeeds them.”

If you’d like to contact me for tips, comments, and/or feedback, drop me a line at max.griera@euractiv.com

[Edited by Aurelie Pugnet/Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]

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