EU Parliament ethics system 'not fit for the job', EU expert says
Professor Alberto Alemanno thinks the European Parliament's ethics rules have failed to address corruption risks, but that this does not damage the image of the EU as a whole.
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Professor Alberto Alemanno thinks the European Parliament's ethics rules have failed to address corruption risks, but that this does not damage the image of the EU as a whole.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/03/14/eu-parliament-ethics-system-not-fit-for-the-job-eu-expert-says
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
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00:00The latest corruption scandal in European Parliament, this time related to Chinese tech
00:07giant Huawei, shows that the EU's current ethics system is not fit for the job, according
00:13to EU policy expert Alberto Alemano.
00:15The Parliament did propose a 14-point action plan two years ago in the wake of a cash-for-influence
00:22scandal, but the results are lacking.
00:25Their enforcement is really much in the hands of the president of the European Parliament
00:30or any other European institution, which basically means that there is a self-policing system
00:36in which political parties check one another in a way which is not independent.
00:40So by design, the system is not working and is designed not to work.
00:48According to Alemano, sitting and former MEPs are still able to sell their influence.
00:53Third-country lobbying is also a grey area.
00:56This is because the big political parties are not committed to strict rules on the establishment
01:02of an independent ethics body.
01:04However, the EU's image as a whole is not ruined, he claims.
01:10It's very easy to qualify the European Union as a whole as a very corrupt organization.
01:18But in reality, even these scandals prove the opposite.
01:21It is not the European Union per se to be a corrupt institution, but the members or
01:27some of the members or very few members of the European Parliament, which is one of the
01:31institutions, have been lending themselves to a possible attempt of corruption.
01:37On Thursday, Belgian investigators searched Holmes and Huawei headquarters.
01:42They suspect that the Chinese company paid bribes to MEPs in order to influence legislation
01:48in the European Parliament.
01:51For more UN videos visit www.un.org