{"id":17481,"date":"2026-04-20T02:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T02:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/17481\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T02:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T02:11:09","slug":"eu-parliaments-reputation-at-stake-in-access-debate-new-anti-fraud-chief-says-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/17481\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Parliament\u2019s reputation at stake in access debate, new anti-fraud chief says \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Klement\u2019s push for clarity over the scope of OLAF\u2019s access comes ahead of an anticipated EU review<\/a> later this year of rules governing the watchdog\u2019s work, part of a broader revamp aimed at improving fraud prevention in Europe. It comes amid wider scrutiny of how EU institutions handle allegations of corruption and misconduct.<\/p>\n

The issue came into sharp focus during the 2022 corruption scandal known as Qatargate<\/a>, a Belgian probe into alleged attempts by Qatar and Morocco to influence decision-making in the Parliament. OLAF investigators complained at the time of being blocked from accessing lawmakers\u2019 offices and laptops.<\/p>\n

EU institutions have a \u201cmoral obligation\u201d to \u201cembrace transparency,\u201d Klement wrote in OLAF\u2019s annual report for 2025<\/a>, released Monday. The body concluded eight cases last year involving Parliament staff members, the report said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have any problems with most of [the EU institutions]. With most of them we cooperate without any issues,\u201d Klement told POLITICO. But it\u2019s debatable whether the agreements OLAF has with certain institutions are \u201cenough as a legal basis for the cooperation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Under current rules, OLAF \u2014 an administrative body without the power to bring criminal prosecutions \u2014 must request permission to access the premises of the Parliament 48 hours in advance, except in \u201cexceptional\u201d cases where giving such notice would undermine an investigation.<\/p>\n

A 2013 cooperation agreement between OLAF and the Parliament is supposed to facilitate access to the legislature\u2019s premises, building on an agreement signed<\/a> in 1999 that says the Parliament\u2019s security office \u201cshall assist [OLAF] in the practical conduct of investigations.\u201d But OLAF\u2019s scrutiny board said in a 2024 report<\/a> that the Parliament remained reluctant to let investigators conduct searches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Klement\u2019s push for clarity over the scope of OLAF\u2019s access comes ahead of an anticipated EU review later…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[2878,258,12560,3788,4208,4746,13010],"class_list":{"0":"post-17481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-european-parliament","8":"tag-accountability","9":"tag-european-parliament","10":"tag-financial-crime-fraud","11":"tag-fraud","12":"tag-lobbying","13":"tag-transparency","14":"tag-ville-itala"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}