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30 January 2023

What Europe’s ‘Qatargate’ Is—and Isn’t

Caroline de Gruyter

Eleven days before last Christmas, the French radio program Les Matins de France Culture dedicated a segment to “Qatargate,” the corruption scandal in the European Parliament that had just broken. The two guests were a French member of the European Parliament (MEP) and a journalist for the newspaper Le Figaro specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. Within minutes, the conversation drifted from the cash found at a Greek MEP’s home in Brussels and the offices of parliamentary assistants that had been searched and sealed to Qatar’s lavish spending in Paris in recent years.

This is just one sign that we have to be careful about labeling Qatargate as a European problem or, as a French far-left MEP said last week, “a chronic disease of the European institutions.” Not only is there no evidence, for the moment, that other European institutions outside the European Parliament are affected, but national institutions and politicians also seem to be grappling with problems of a similar nature.

On the radio broadcast, the guests discussed how, under former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, politicians were reportedly not averse to “gifts” from the tiny Gulf state, home to one of the world’s largest sovereign funds. Already, in 2016, in a book called Nos très chers émirs, journalists accused a French deputy minister of having received money from Qatar in exchange for political favors; he denied the accusation. French President Emmanuel Macron, one of the guests said, had allegedly received such expensive gifts from Qatar that he had discreetly returned them through the French Embassy in Doha.

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