Martin Jay, Strategic Culture,
22/12/2022
How much does the cash-for-whitewashing scandal effect Morocco’s current
claims on Western Sahara, both at the UN and at EU level?
Corruptible, by Paolo Calleri
After the dust is starting to settle on the biggest corruption scandal the
EU has ever had, it seems that it was not created by Qatar, but by Morocco
which had a network of corrupt MEPs on the books for almost 20 years. But who
else got the whitewashing service?
It has shaken both the foundations and the highest echelons of the EU elite
in Brussels. But the Eva Kaili corruption case, which has so far jailed three
MEPs, is not quite what it seems. Much as it would be desirable to pin the
blame on cash-rich Qataris swanning about Brussels with suitcases of cash,
recent investigations from Belgian authorities have unearthed that a Qatari
minister came to Brussels recently and only had to go to a “one stop shop” – a
cabal of cash-hungry MEPs who had been on the Moroccan payroll for at least 15
years to whitewash the kingdom’s human rights record and get the best deal for
Western Sahara in terms of trade deal breaks and status.
This group of corrupt MEPs had been taking cash and gifts for at least 15
years and were well known on the Brussels circuit for their ‘pay-as-you-go’
services within the European parliament whose ‘foreign affairs committee’ –
once considered prestigious and certainly important on the EU circuit – has now
been left in tatters.
For decades Morocco got a free ride in Brussels. The question of
sovereignty of its annexed Western Sahara was never raised. The rights of the
citizens of this disputed region never put under the spotlight, while the territory
itself benefited from an EU trade deal covering fish and minerals to name but a
few. Even the human rights record, in general, of Morocco within its own
country has been bypassed for so long as the EU once considered it the darling
of the MENA region for its reforms on women’s rights, for example.
The whitewashing in general came from the European Parliament which the
other EU institutions, to some extent, had to respect (although the EU courts
refused ultimately to accept that Western Sahara could or should be included
with Morocco in terms of benefiting from a trade deal with the EU).
So now, three key questions emerge which the Moroccan press, stalwart
champions of self-censorship, will certainly not ask. How much does the
cash-for-whitewashing scandal effect Morocco’s current claims on Western
Sahara, both at the UN and at EU level? Secondly, does the EU now begin to look
at Morocco without the rose-tinted specs and start to examine the bevy of
arrests from anyone who questions decisions made on a high level – from
journalists on trumped-up charges in jail to former ministers who have dared to
criticise how the government and the powerful business elite go about running
the country – and act accordingly?
And lastly, perhaps more importantly, is the unedifying subject of who else
benefited from these dirty MEPs and their services? Anyone who follows the EU’s
pathetic attempts at acting as a world player with a papier-mâché hegemony
which it hilariously conjures up for Global South countries in particular will
ask the obvious question about Israel. The abysmal dehumanisation of rights of
the Palestinians who every day on social media we see having their land stolen,
their olive trees uprooted or in many cases their homes destroyed by Israelis,
who do so in the full knowledge that there will be no hue and cry from the West
and in particular the EU itself. When just recently a Palestinian in the West
Bank was shot dead at point blank range by an Israeli security officer who was
wrestling with him, it didn’t make MSM channels and it certainly didn’t create
any ripple of shockwaves among MEPs. How is that possible, one might ask, from
an institution whose raison d’être is to protect human rights both
within the EU and with those it interacts and trades with?
The last time the EU even feigned to threaten Israel over its draw-dropping
human rights atrocities was in 2014 when a somewhat idealist and ‘Arabist’
Federica Mogherini entered office and just for a few weeks suggested that the
EU should enforce a labelling system for goods made in occupied Palestine which
make their way to European supermarkets. The idea quickly fizzled away, within
a few weeks, and was never heard of again. Given what we know about the
Moroccan network of MEPs on the baksheesh payroll, not to mention the date of
Mogherini’s proposal, is it inconceivable that these same parliamentarians were
taking cash to lobby their colleagues in committees to give Israel a break? The
deafening and spooky silence from the EU on Israel’s daily genocide of the
Palestinians is worrying, but now we know how the European Parliament operates
when it comes to atrocities committed by MENA region countries – and how they
are airbrushed out of the curriculum – it is hardly surprising that the
brutality of the Israeli regime has intensified. The real story about
corruption though in the European parliament is not the three MEPs taking cash
but how the 702 other MEPs will want to now prevent any real investigation
going on internally, all simply to save their jobs and preserve their cosy
lifestyles.
