European Parliament and Eva Kaili: Masterclass in dodging accountability Opinion by EU Today

In his scathing opinion piece, Gary Cartwright, publisher and editor of EU Today, examines the unraveling of the so-called “Qatargate” scandal, involving EU official Eva Kaili,—once hailed as the European Parliament’s biggest corruption case. Caliber.Az reprints the article. 

"The so-called “Qatargate” scandal—once touted as the biggest corruption case in the history of the European Parliament—has all but evaporated into the Brussels fog.

Eva Kaili, the former Vice-President of the European Parliament and one-time poster girl of modern Euro-integrity, is no longer wearing an electronic tag. Her defence team is claiming victory, and the once-frantic Belgian authorities are left in a state of investigative paralysis.

One could be forgiven for thinking the whole affair had been nothing more than an elaborate distraction—a thunderous accusation followed by a deafening silence. The facts, such as we know them, are extraordinary.

In late 2022, Belgian police arrested Kaili, seized around €1.5 million in cash, and declared that foreign powers—namely Qatar and Morocco—had sought to buy influence in the European Parliament. The press had a field day, and EU officials fell over themselves to express shock and outrage.

But eighteen months later, the scandal seems less like a turning point and more like a missed opportunity—or worse, a cover-up. No formal charges have been laid against Kaili.

The investigation is mired in technical delays. Key evidence is being challenged on procedural grounds. And the Belgian judiciary, far from pressing its case, appears to be collapsing under its own incompetence.

One wonders whether we are witnessing the quiet burial of a politically inconvenient scandal. Kaili insists she is innocent, of course. And perhaps she is.

But the stench of protectionism and institutional cowardice hangs heavy over Brussels.

The EU is quick to rail against corruption when it occurs in Hungary or Poland. When it is discovered in its own gilded chambers, however, the air becomes mysteriously thick with legal nuance and procedural complexity.

The Belgian police, for their part, do not inspire confidence. This is not their first high-profile misfire. Their investigation into the 2016 Brussels terror attacks was widely criticised for its delays and lack of coordination. Intelligence sharing failed. Known radicals evaded capture. And by the time the judicial system rumbled into action, much of the damage was already done.

Even in domestic political scandals, the Belgian prosecutorial machine has a record of running out of steam. Take the long-festering Kazakhgate affair, involving allegations of Belgian officials helping quash an international arrest warrant in return for opaque favours. Years of inquiry yielded little more than shrugging magistrates and unanswered questions.

Now, in Qatargate, the same pattern appears to be repeating. First came the headlines. Then the photo ops: cash-stuffed suitcases, stony-faced suspects. And then—nothing. The investigating judge has stepped down. His replacement was suspended. The evidence is being disputed. Kaili’s lawyers are now turning the tables, claiming that the whole affair was a politically motivated charade, and that their client is the victim of a media witch hunt.

In short, the European Parliament’s moment of reckoning has quietly slipped through its own fingers.

But we must also ask, cui bono? Who benefits from the disintegration of this probe? Certainly not the European public, who were led to believe that Brussels was finally going to confront its own rot. Rather, it is the institutional elite who seem to emerge, once again, untouched.

There are persistent whispers that other MEPs may have been involved—most notably Maria Arena, a Belgian socialist with alleged links to the main suspects. But Arena has not faced the same scrutiny. Her name, curiously, has disappeared from the conversation. Kaili’s legal team is now alleging double standards, pointing out that certain MEPs seem to enjoy a form of “de facto immunity.”

And yet, perhaps the reason for the institutional inertia runs deeper still. Brussels is awash with speculation that an even more senior political figure may be implicated—someone whose fall would rattle the European establishment to its core. If this is true, the delay, the dithering, and the procedural confusion all begin to make a grim sort of sense. Obfuscation, in this context, isn’t just convenient—it’s essential.

Which brings us to the next potential scandal already brewing: the investigation into Huawei’s lobbying activities within the European Parliament. If the Qatargate saga is any guide, we should brace ourselves for more legal quicksand and prosecutorial foot-dragging with Huaweigate. But perhaps this time, things may be somewhat different—because the accused are not former vice-presidents or senior political faces, but mere rank-and-file MEPs.

In other words, expendables.

Unlike Kaili, these are not individuals who can rally high-powered legal teams or threaten institutional embarrassment. And so, one suspects, they may be sacrificed to preserve the illusion of accountability. Brussels may suddenly rediscover its appetite for justice—so long as it doesn’t have to choke on one of its own grandees.

The Kaili affair should have been a moment of institutional renewal. Instead, it is becoming a monument to the EU’s instinct for self-preservation. The Belgian police have stumbled once more, the judiciary is in disarray, and the Parliament’s leadership seems curiously content to let the matter fade.

Perhaps that is the real lesson of Qatargate: that in Brussels, when it comes to accountability, the system is designed not to expose wrongdoing—but to survive it," Cartwright writes.