A third Belgian MEP in just the past week has admitted to having failed to properly declare official trips that were funded in whole or in part by third parties, Le Soir has reported.
On Monday, Tom Vandenkendelaere (EPP) announced that he had undertaken six sponsored trips in 2021 and 2022 — long after the deadline for declaring such trips had expired. According to parliamentary rules, official trips sponsored by third parties must be communicated to the parliamentary authorities within one month of their conclusion.
The news comes after two other Belgian MEPs, Marc Tarabella and Marie Arena (both S&D), recently confessed to having failed to declare that official trips to Doha over the past couple of years were funded by the Qatari Government.
It has not yet been reported which countries Vandenkendelaere travelled to, nor who paid for the trips. None of the three MEPs have been charged with a crime, although, as Le Soir has also reported, Tarabella is currently in the process of having his immunity stripped by the European Parliament following a formal request by the Belgian authorities.
La Libre Belgique also reported on Tuesday that Tarabella has refused suspend himself from his centre-left (S&D) parliamentary group, arguing that he is innocent until proven guilty.
Suspicious omissions
On Sunday, Marc Tarabella's laywer admitted that his client failed to declare a trip to the Gulf peninsula in February 2020, as well as another journey to Ghana around the same time.
"He was invited [to Qatar] for a conference," Tarabella's lawyer Maxim Toller told Belgian broadcaster RTL. "The organisers paid. He hasn't declared it yet… He then went to Ghana and then there was Covid… His colleague reminded him to do it but time ran out."
Toller further emphasised that "there is nothing illegal about a trip paid for by an organisation", and stressed that his client travelled to Qatar "to see the construction of the [World Cup] stadiums and to meet with workers". He added that his client would soon "put things in order".
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A few days earlier, Marie Arena similarly claimed that she had "forgotten" to declare several official trips over the past couple of years: notably, this included a trip to Doha on 8 and 9 May last year, which was partially funded by the Qatari Government.
"It's true, I have made three trips by invitation since the beginning of my mandate," Arena told l'Echo. "The person who takes care of my statements in the transparency register, a rather complicated document to fill out, did not declare these trips because she didn't know it had to be done."
Arena has since resigned from her position as Chair of the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI), after it was also revealed that, between December 2021 and September last year, she had had almost four hundred telephone calls with former DROI Chair Antonio Panzeri: one of the key figures implicated in the Qatargate scandal, according to which the Qatari Government is believed to have made payments to various senior political officials in exchange for their support for pro-Qatari policies.
