On January 1, 2023, Sweden took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, shortly after elections which saw the formation of a new coalition government led by Ulf Kristersson and supported by the far-right Democrats of Sweden, from the European group CRE.

Some fear that the displayed euroscepticism of this party will affect the European agenda for the next six months.

But Alberto Alemanno is not so catastrophic: "we must not overvalue the role of the rotating presidency of the Council. The role of the Swedish government will simply be to define the agenda, the issues to be dealt with, but it will be dependent on the position of the European Commission and Parliament and of all governments".

This agenda is likely to be largely devoted to the European response in the context of the war in Ukraine and the desire to maintain the unity of the Twenty-Seven on the issue, and "Sweden shares the position of all the other members".

Qatargate is in the process of shaking all the institutions and the Parliament of Strasbourg in the first place.

Belgian justice arrested, on December 9, the Greek socialist MEP and vice-president of the institution, Eva Kaili, for acts of corruption.

The investigation is continuing and the President of the European Parliament has requested the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of two other members of Parliament, also from the Socialists and Democrats group.

>> To read on France 24: In the storm of "Qatargate", the sinking of Greek MEP Eva Kaili

According to Alberto Alemanno, "the European Union has a rather developed, rather sophisticated ethical control system", but the European Parliament is "the weak link" in this integrity system, because it has "always resisted the possibility to impose on its own members a whole series of rules".

The lawyer, who founded the organization The Good Lobby, is not opposed to the idea of ​​lobbying, but it is time for him to establish rules within Parliament because "the various members of the European Parliament, as well that the civil servants who support them, are increasingly solicited by different interests (...) who, apparently in the case of Qatar, are willing to pay sums and therefore to move from lobbying to corruption (...) because we are there in a situation of corruption".

What he qualifies as "the biggest scandal, having ever splashed an institution supposed to incarnate the exemplarity as regards public morality" reveals that "the European Parliament is not readable by the European electorate" because "this type of event at a national level would have been immediately seized by the press, by a whole series of civil society actors who permanently exercise control over their representatives. And this is not the case at European level".

>> To read on France 24: Lobbying: the European Parliament, a model of transparency in the turmoil of "Qatargate"

"Each European institution has its own rules and its own system of applying the rules, and this has obviously created significant discrepancies which, today, could be overcome".

Alberto Alemanno has long pleaded for the creation of an independent authority, he insists, of transparency with powers of investigation and sanctions, in order to centralize all these competences, "an authority which would be for the first time independent , made up of former members of independent institutions, such as the Court of Justice of the European Union or the Court of Auditors, and which would be supposed to monitor and ensure compliance with the rules. But the question is to know what type of power we are going to assign to this entity."

Program prepared by Sophie Samaille, Isabelle Romero and Perrine Desplats

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