With elections looming, EU must ramp up efforts to curb malign external interference

Well over a year since Qatargate first rattled the European Parliament, MEPs have secured an agreement for the creation of an EU ethics watchdog to tackle institutional corruption in Brussels. Finalised on 25 April, the new body aims to restore the Parliament’s bruised, post-scandal reputation, yet optimistic assessments of this development are likely overblown.

Despite the plague of corruption and undue influence allegations that have mired the waning Parliamentary mandate, the MEP’s initial proposal has been significantly diluted, with the removal of the watchdog’s investigative and sanctioning powers prompting well-grounded fears that it lacks teeth. Given that the EU’s democracy faces severe external threats, from foreign states interfering with the looming elections to multinational companies pursuing their noxious commercial interests, Brussels’s policymakers must take a stand.

Building on encouraging transparency initiatives from the past year, an MEP-led, cross-sector coalition should emerge to shield European democracy and citizens’ well-being from malign foreign influence before all public faith is lost.

Brussels’s transparency demons alive and well

The EU’s transparency efforts in the post-Qatargate landscape show a concerning lack of progress, a reality foreign governments are all too familiar with. After going quiet in the fallout of Qatargate, a shadowy NGO has returned to the Parliamentary scene. Ironically named the Democracy Centre for Transparency, the organisation’s policy focus – including a clear anti-UAE agenda and defense of Qatar’s human rights record – in its lobbying of MEPs bears the hallmarks of a covert influence front.

More menacingly, Russia and China are ramping up interference efforts ahead of the European elections, notably weaponising the bloc’s most influential far-right parties. In early April, Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) second-listed Parliamentary candidate, Petr Bystron, was hit with allegations of accepting cash from a pro-Russia media site, while a parliamentary aide of the party’s top candidate, Maximilian Krah, was exposed as a spy for China’s intelligence services later that month.

In mid-April, Belgian prosecutors launched a probe into a Russian propaganda offensive, in which far-right MEPs from Germany, Belgium, France, Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands are suspected to have accepted bribes to spread the Kremlin’s narratives with the goal of helping elect pro-Russian MEPs in June.

Stumbling institutional response

Roughly coinciding with Belgium’s investigation, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has published a new report spotlighting the EU institutions’ systemic vulnerabilities.

While conceding certain positive impacts of the voluntary EU Transparency Register established in 2011 to consolidate information on EU lobbying activities, the ECA notably highlights the tool’s critical “blind spots.” According to lead auditor Jorg Kristijan Petrovic, “the EU transparency register must be bolstered so that it doesn’t turn into a paper tiger,” with “a range of lobbying interactions…hidden from the public eye” exposing the bloc’s policymaking process to undue influence.

The ECA’s assessment notably chimes with European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly’s February ruling that the Transparency Register’s operator, the Secretariat, was guilty of maladministration for failing to conduct robust investigations into complaints, reflecting the body’s laxist approach that has seen only one lobbyist banned for abusing the system over its thirteen-year existence.

Referring to tobacco as the classic example of an industry’s commercial interests pitted against the public good, O’Reilly has equally raised alarm at the Commission’s lack of compliance with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC)’s strict requirements on limiting, documenting and making public its meetings with tobacco lobbyists.

Big Tobacco derailing public health progress

Yet, where the Commission has shirked its responsibilities, MEPs have sprung to action. Last month, a cross-party European Parliament Working Group presented the findings of its new White Paper exposing tobacco industry’s undue influence over the policies – particularly concerning the parallel trade – needed to tackle smoking’s catastrophic public health and environmental impacts.

The Commission’s weakness to industry lobbying has caused ongoing delays of the Tobacco Products Directive and Tobacco Taxation Directive revisions – which would fully implement the WHO FCTC and its ITP Protocol – as well as the controversial awarding of the EU’s track and trace system to industry-linked Dentsu Tracking in 2018. As MEP Anne-Sophie Pelletier recently noted, Dentsu Tracking only registered on the EU Transparency Register in March, which she sees as an “acknowledgement” of “violating transparency and ethical rules.”

Dentsu has seemingly benefited from the climate of Big Tobacco-Commission collusion exposed by the Dalligate scandal. Back under the spotlight at an opportune moment as new film “Smoke Signals” hits the big screen recounting the scandal from the perspective of former MEP José Bové, Dalligate saw then-Health Commissioner John Dalli forced to resign for accepting an alleged bribe of €60 million from the tobacco industry to undermine the revision of EU directives that would have imposed independent traceability and plain packaging. Over a decade later, Big Tobacco’s policy grip has yet to fade.

Moving forward, the White Paper’s authors call for a mandatory Transparency Register to curb Big Tobacco’s lobbying power as well as higher, EU-wide minimum tax rates and independent track and trace to deliver on the Commission’s ‘Tobacco-Free Generation’ ambition.

Amazon ban shows inspiring change of course

Paired with their stand against Big Tobacco, MEPs’ barring of Amazon lobbyists in February has sent a powerful pro-transparency message that tobacco lobbyists should heed as its social and environmental transgressions could place it in next in the firing line.

Only the second time the Parliament has taken this drastic step – the first targeting Monsanto in 2017 – the revocation of Amazon lobbyists’ access badges comes after a long battle with MEPs over transparency and working conditions. According to MEPs, Amazon had repeatedly refused to engage in the scrutiny process over its labour rights approach – notably involving pay, warehouse conditions and unionisation issues – while spending nearly €20 million to lobby EU institutions over the past decade.

Whether emanating from hostile foreign governments or multinationals, the EU has within its power to cut out undue influence. Measures such as bolstering the powers of the EU’s new ethics watchdog would help protect its policymaking process, facilitating the passage of legislation that puts people above external interests.

Doing so would go a long way in restoring Brussels’s tarnished image and voters’ confidence ahead of June’s elections. As the far-right’s surging poll numbers reflect, Europeans increasingly view EU policymakers as elitist, corrupt and out of touch with their needs. With the recent parade of malign influence scandals providing an opportunity for introspection and renewal, MEPs and Commission officials must take the long-delayed actions to prove them wrong.