Roberta Metsola, on 'Qatargate': "It has destroyed 20 years of trust in the European Parliament"

If there is something that corrodes Roberta Metsola, it is the damage to the reputation of the European Parliament that

is causing , the plot of alleged bribes to members of the European Parliament that broke out at the end of last year and that has a former vice president of the chamber, the Greek Eva Kaili, in pretrial detention and several more active MEPs under suspicion.

“We have to regain trust.

A trust that took us 20 years to build and that was destroyed in a few days", says the president of the European Parliament in an interview given this Thursday to various European media, including EL PAÍS, coinciding with the formal presentation of its first 14 rapid implementation measures to "strengthen the integrity, independence and accountability" of the institution.

His idea—his wish—is that these first steps be approved as quickly as possible.

"If it were up to me, in a month," says this 43-year-old Maltese lawyer.

She knows it's not going to be easy.

After several drafts, the latest proposal, for example, is limited to suggesting that there be a "incompatibility period" for those former MEPs who want to lobby the European chamber, but does not set times for it, as previous projects did.

Even so, this first point of his plan, reveals Metsola, is one of the most harshly discussed in the Conference of Presidents, the meeting with the leaders of the European political groups this Thursday in which the go-ahead was given to initial and urgent measures.

“But it was important that it figured out,” she insists,

Although his office ensures that he has received the "total support" of the parliamentary groups for the initiatives, some qualify that it was a "fairly general" discussion and that they have yet to send their contributions to the proposed measures.

These also contemplate approving the obligation that all lobbyists, NGOs or representatives of interests that are going to participate in a parliamentary hearing register in a Transparency Register, and that all MEPs publish meetings with third parties related to a resolution or report in that they are working

It also seeks to prohibit informal "groups of friends" with third countries when the European Parliament already has an appropriate interlocutor or to impose a registry to enter the Eurochamber that includes the date and reason for the visit.

Metsola also wants MEPs to make a mandatory declaration of potential conflicts of interest before taking on the preparation of a report or resolution for a committee or on a specific country, as well as to give greater clarity on their income, forcing them to declare jobs and parallel activities to his work in the institution.

The Maltese has also proposed creating an "integrity label" on the Parliament's website with detailed information on sanctions, declaration of gifts - officially all MEPs must do so with those that exceed 150 euros, but last year barely a dozen complied , confirms Metsola— or from trips to third countries not paid for by the European Parliament.

This last point has led to the resignation this week as president of the Human Rights Subcommittee of the Belgian MEP Marie Arena, who has acknowledged that she did not register a trip to Qatar whose flights and stay were paid for by this Gulf State, although she has attributed it to a “mistake” by a parliamentary assistant.

Although she has not been formally accused of anything at the moment, the Belgian socialist is one of the deputies who has been most targeted by the investigation since the

due to her proximity to the main defendant, the former Italian MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, of whom he

the subcommittee which he has now left.

Arena has also been suspended from the group of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), like other parliamentarians under suspicion: it is also the Belgian Marc Tarabella and the Italian Andrea Cozzolino.

The Belgian justice has requested the lifting of the immunity of both, a process that will begin next Monday, when Metsola officially notifies the request to the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and which should take a month.

Despite the arrests and finger-pointing targeting S&D above all else, Metsola, whose political family is the conservative European People's Party (EPP), avoids pointing fingers.

“I would like each one to assume their responsibility.

Mine is to make sure that this Parliament can boast of its integrity, independence and accountability.

And that's what we're trying to do,” she retorts.

To do this, he insists, he has presented these initial measures, which he considers a kind of "firewall" and which must be approved as soon as possible.

Therefore, this Friday the administrative services will analyze who is responsible for what, to distribute the tasks and implement them as quickly as possible.

“I have received a mandate to reform this Parliament, to analyze the rules, to see what works and what doesn't, to see what is used and what is not.

How to implement [measures].

This is something that goes beyond self-regulation;

We have to realize that we must reinforce the measures and look at new ones ”, analyzes the president of the institution.

And she is confident that the moment is now or never: "I think there is political will and that we have the momentum to create measures or reinforce them," underlines Metsola, for whom some of the proposals "should have been made years ago."

“We have done things better, but clearly, it is not enough.

I would like to create more firewalls so that at least the alarms go off a little earlier”, insists the Maltese, who took office almost a year ago, on January 18, 2022. A task, she admits, that she did not imagine would end 12 months later with a former MEP (Panzeri), a former vice president of the European Parliament (Kaili) and a parliamentary assistant (Francesco Giorgi) in pretrial detention for corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization, after being seized 1.5 million euros in cash from alleged payments from governments such as Qatar or Morocco to influence the agency's decisions on these countries.

Beyond the pleas for Cozzolino and Tarabella, the president of the institution, who says that she has not slept "much" for this scandal for a month, points out that she has not received any more requests to lift the immunity of MEPs for

Metsola assures that it will continue collaborating with the Belgian justice, while working to improve the transparency and controls of the European Parliament.

Something that, apart from the first quick measures, will imply other reforms of greater depth and longer terms, he warns her.

Like the proposal, also presented this Thursday by the S&D progressives, to create an Ethics Body of the EU institutions "before the end of the legislature", in 2024. By that date, Metsola agrees, the European Parliament must have given clear signs that it is capable of living up to the public trust that

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