Last week, the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee blocked the creation of an independent EU ethics body. Following scandals like Qatargate and Huaweigate, the body would act as a watchdog to uphold ethical standards across EU institutions.
In 2023, before the European elections, eight institutions reached an agreement to establish the watchdog. The European Parliament was one of them. But as majorities have shifted in favour of the (centre) right, so has the appetite for more transparency.
With 13 votes in favour and 17 against within the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, the decisive votes to block the watchdog came from the Christian Democrats (EPP) – who once again broke their election promise not to collaborate with the far right. Ironically, the party campaigning for stricter transparency rules for NGOs does not want those rules to apply to itself.
EPP member Jeroen Lenaers says opposition within his group arises from two concerns. “First, we are in favour of reforms but against the current proposal, as the secretariat would be based in and paid by the European Commission. Second, the scandals that happened were already forbidden under the current rules. The stricter ethical rules as formulated in the current proposal will not prevent scandals like Huaweigate, but they create a sense of collective guilt.”
The German Greens lawmaker Daniel Freund calls on his colleagues to live up to the agreement they signed in the previous term. For Freund, the battle for the watchdog is not over yet. He has requested a legal opinion from the European Parliament’s Legal Service, and says the first meeting to appoint independent experts can already be hosted.