The French Euro MP who helped broker a loan of 9 million euros for Marine Le Pen's Front National (FN) party from a Russian bank could face disciplinary action over the deal. Far-right MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhauser has admitted being paid 140,000 euros for his consultancy work in setting up the contract with Moscow-based First Czech Russian Bank, which was finalised in September 2014. When Mediapart broke the story Schaffhauser brushed aside suggestions he had done anything wrong, declaring: “If there is a conflict of interest that's for the European Parliament to decide.”
Now it looks as if the authorities in Strasbourg are going to act on the French politician's comments and examine the MEP's declaration of financial interests. The president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz has made it clear he does not rule out sanctions against Schaffhauser. “His media declarations could signify that there is a problem linked to his declaration of financial interests,” Schulz's spokesman Armin Machmer told Mediapart. “We are going to ask the parliament’s internal authorities in charge of MEPs [editor's note, this is a specialist unit of the parliament] to check his declaration. Depending on the outcome we will take the necessary measures. If there is a problem the president will not hesitate to impose sanctions.”
In itself it is not illegal to go out and find funding for a political party from abroad. Nor is it against the rules of the European Parliament. But the French MEP must defend himself against two main concerns raised by parliamentary experts. Firstly, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser says that he received a 140,000 euro commission for helping arrange the loan, which was finalised in September 2014. But as of December 1st, 2014, this sum had not yet appeared in the MEP's declaration of interests, available online here on the parliament's website. Yet under the “Code of Conduct for Members of the European Parliament with respect to financial interests and conflicts of interest”, and in particular under article 4, each MEP must inform the institution's president “of any changes that have an influence on their declaration within 30 days of each change occurring”.
The second potential infringement by the French MEP also involves the register of financial interests; Schaffhauser's declarations imply that he gave up his activities as a consultant after he was elected in the European elections in May 2014. In one section he declares that he received more than 10,000 euros a month gross as an international consultant in the three years before he became a member. But the part of the form where he is supposed to declare any “regularly paid activity” carried out in parallel to his current duties as an MEP has been left blank. Yet on the face of it he has omdeed continued his consultancy work, at any rate for the Front National and at least until the autumn of 2014.
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When tackled about this by Mediapart, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser insisted that he was not completely aware of the details concerning his declaration. “I don't know, I shall have to see, but I think that [my activities as a consultant] were put on [my] 2014 [declaration]. There were estimates for 2014. In my declaration in France [editor's note, with the Haute autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique]it was precise, very precise. As for my declaration to [the European] parliament, I'm going to see if I need to review it. You are right to point this out to me,” he added. If one goes by the letter of article 166 of the parliament's internal rules, the sanctions mentioned by Martin Schulz's office could take the form of an official warning or the MEP being suspended from his duties for several days. But at the moment all this is hypothetical.
However, Mediapart's story about the FN's Russian loan has fuelled concerns in the European Parliament that go well beyond the individual behaviour of one far-right MEP. “The reasons why Madame Le Pen attacks the European Parliament so sharply become clearer and clearer each day: Marine Le Pen wants to align France politically with Vladimir Putin and Russia,” says a worried Manfred Weber, a German MEP who is head of the European People's Party (PPE) group, the main right-wing formation at the parliament. “She's in good company there, as other extremist forces on the Left and Right share this approach. The PPE will oppose this movement with all its might: it is out of the question for Europe and France to become part of Russia's sphere of influence.”
Another German MEP, Jan Philipp Albrecht from the Greens, points out: “Russia's leaders are not known for being great democrats, and I find it troubling to say the least that Marine Le Pen, who so often makes reference to democratic principles, should be financed by a bank from a country which is absolutely not democratic.”
Marine Le Pen's party is not, however, the only one to be flirting with Russian banks. An “extraordinary Russian cash and charm offensive”, as the British newspaper The Independent put it recently, is being carried out by Moscow among “anti-system” parties, and this is not restricted to France. Other “Europhobe” groups – as they are described in Brussels – are also suspected of having had recourse to the Russian rouble via loans.
Some Euro MPs are now facing legal proceedings in their own countries, accused in effect of being agents of Putin's regime at the European Parliament. This is the case, for example, with Béla Kovács, an MEP for the extreme-right Hungarian party Jobbik. Kovács denies the claims and an investigation is ongoing. Tatjana Zdanoka, an MEP from the Latvian Russian Union party and who sits with the Greens in the European Parliament, has also been accused in Latvia of serving Moscow’s interests, a claim she, too, denies. Kovács and Zdanoka were both among a group of “foreign observers” at the sham referendum organised in Crimea at the start of the year over whether it wanted to be absorbed by Russia. The Front National MEP Aymeric Chauprade was also at the observer gathering in Sevastopol, officially in his capacity as a “geopolitical ” expert.
Meanwhile the German daily newspaper Bild reports that the Kremlin has directly financed the anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) party which created a surprised in May's European elections, picking up seven seats. Its group leader in Strasbourg, Bernd Lucke, has denied the claims. Unlike the French FN or the Hungarian Jobbik, whose MEPs sit as non-attached members of the parliament, AfD belongs to one of the main groupings, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which includes the British Conservatives.
Other media reports have suggested that the Ataka nationalist party from Bulgaria and the far-right Freedom Party of Austria have also received Russian loans. “This really must be debated in the European Parliament,” says Jan Philipp Albrecht. “We must ask ourselves how come European parties, which are elected to the European Parliament, are getting financed from outside Europe. It is a vital question.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter