Politico: Metsola “forgot” to declare 125 gifts – “Champagne, chocolates, gold”

Its president European Parliament Roberta Metzola declared 142 gifts she received in a public register for MEPs, in a move that exposed the EU institution’s limited transparency rules, Politico reports.

Metsola, a Maltese MEP from the centre-right European People’s Party group, entered the gifts she received in an official public file that lawmakers rarely update. In doing so, however, last week she missed the deadline for MEPs to declare their gifts in relation to 125 of the items on her list, the publication notes.

Metsola’s team argued that her statements “broke” years of secrecy from former Speakers of Parliament, none of whom went so far as to publicly disclose the hundreds of gifts given to them by foreign officials. Her representative said that the deadline for MEPs did not apply to Metsola by “custom” because she is the president of Parliament as well as an MEP, although her team could not point to this exception being officially defined anywhere in writing.

“This shows that the system is broken,” said Michiel van Hulten, director of Transparency International EU and a former MEP. “You cannot operate a moral system based on unwritten rules. It’s good that he has now done this, but there is no reward for following the rules.”

The gifts Metsola received included: a gold tower model from senior Moroccan politician Naam Mayara, a white dress with gold embroidery from Fawzia Zainal, speaker of the Bahraini parliament, a scarf from French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, Sennheiser wireless headphones from the German Bundestag, a vase from the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU, a white blouse from the President of Moldova Maia Sandu, a book about Bruges from the rector of the College of Europe, Federica Mogherini and a decorative plate from the Ambassador of Uzbekistan in the Benelux countries.

Metsola also received champagne, chocolates, biscuits, cakes and dried sausages, which were “served during the functions of Parliament”.

For 125 of those gifts, Metsola’s declarations came after the deadline for him to disclose them under rules for MEPs. According to Parliament’s code of conduct for members, gifts must be disclosed no later than the end of the month following the month in which MEPs received them.