That the eight core EU institutions – including the European Parliament and the EU Commission – last month agreed on a new inter-institutional body for ethical standards is hailed as a step forward in preventing 'black sheep' in some key positions from weakening trust in the European project.
More specifically, although this body has been longer in the making, the aim is clearly to avoid a repeat of the 2022 Qatar/Morocco-gate scandal that has severely dented the image of the parliament and elected officials.
The focus of the new ethics body is thus on capturing unethical individuals within the European institutions – quite unsurprisingly given the accusations against the likes of Eva Kaili and Antonio Panzeri, including of accepting bribes, lucrative consultancies, honours, hospitality, and free trips, and making unethical and illicit use of their status as MEPs.
The five independent experts to be appointed for the body will thus be able to examine “individual cases” at the request of any of the participant EU institutions. While this is undoubtedly crucial, our recent research on the Moroccan component of the EP scandal points to another key weakness in institutional setup: the in-built tension between the EP’s parliamentary diplomacy and its oversight role.
The EP’s oversight role would have demanded a certain distance from the main protagonists of the contentious EU-Morocco bilateral cooperation agreements presumably at the heart of Morocco-gate.
These include fisheries and agricultural trade deals which have over the past 15 years become embroiled in the conflict over Western Sahara because they include(d) this non-self-governing territory as if it was indistinguishably part of Morocco.
However, the EP’s formal and informal parliamentary diplomacy actively nurtured undue proximity with the Moroccan side. This happened in the case of an official mechanism, the EU-Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which prided itself of a unique pairwise working method (binômes) that had “helped to forge strong interpersonal relationships among members”.
In fact, its two co-chairs for most of the 2010-2014 and 2014-2019 terms, MEP Antonio Panzeri and Moroccan MP Abderrahim Atmoun, would emerge as the two key figures at the centre of Moroccogate.
In addition, this institutionalised bilateral forum at times ended up operating in tandem with the informal EU-Morocco Friendship Group, sponsored by Rabat as an instrument of parliamentary lobbying. According to a leaked 2014 Moroccan foreign ministry document, the Friendship Group sought to “develop joint initiatives and approaches” with the JPC.
These problematic EP workings occurred at a time when EU-Morocco deals faced increasing legal challenges and required parliamentary consent on several occasions, especially between 2011 and 2013.
More recently, following European Court of Justice rulings that annulled the fisheries and agricultural trade agreements and ordained territorial differentiation and the “consent” of the people of Western Sahara, the EP consented to renegotiated versions of the deals in early 2019.
This happened in the wake of a controversial mission to the territory by an EP committee delegation. This delegation was also mired in conflicts of interest, to the exasperation of some of its members. Moreover, the EU-Morocco Friendship Group’s head claimed to have played a “key role in the success” of the preparatory committee votes.
Our research thus adds another dimension to immediate critiques of the new EU ethics body.
These pointed to the fact that it will not have investigative or sanctioning powers, and that its independent experts’ examinations of individual cases must be initiated by one of the EU institutions.
The parliament itself expressed disappointment that these independent experts will not be full members, that the body’s remit will not cover the complete time span before, during, and after a term of office/service, and that member state representatives within the Council are not covered.
It is also clear that the ethics body will still need to prove itself. Its core task is to develop, withing six months, common minimum standards for the conduct of the members of each institution covering “some of the most contentious aspects of the EU ethics regimes” including: gifts, hospitality and travel offered; declarations of financial and non-financial interests; external activities (including post-mandate ditto); as well as awards, prizes and honours.
But while there is cautious optimism in some quarters – and more scepticism in others – there is one aspect that still will need addressing: the institutional one.
In particular, MEPs participating in EP delegations in charge of interparliamentary relations with their counterparts from non-EU countries, regions and organisations should be subject to stricter ethical controls, mandatory transparency rules, and scrutiny of potential conflicts of interests arising from their connections with the relevant states. This applies even more strongly to bilateral committees such as the EU-Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee.
At the same time, MEP friendship groups with third countries for which official delegations already exist should be banned altogether, as envisaged by the EP president Roberta Metsola’s 14-point reform plan that was endorsed by the Conference of Presidents, and further recommended by a report of Special Committee on Foreign Interference (ING2) one year ago.
In short, what is needed is a set of changes thoroughly revisiting the functions and set-up of parliamentary diplomacy.
Anna Khakee is associate professor in international relations at the University of Malta. Irene Fernández-Molina is senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Exeter.
Anna Khakee is associate professor in international relations at the University of Malta. Irene Fernández-Molina is senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Exeter.