Is the bloc ready to ward off spies?

NEW DELHI: With just six weeks to go until European Parliament elections, fresh revelations of suspected espionage at the legislature will do little to instill public confidence. The last 18 months have seen a string of malign foreign influence scandals involving EU parliamentarians. First, starting from December 2022, came bombshell accusations that MEPs and their staff accepted cash for influence from Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania. Then, at the start of this year, investigative outlet The Insider alleged that Latvian MEP Tatjana Zdanoka had worked with Russian intelligence officials for years.

Only last month, Czech authorities sanctioned news outlet Voice of Europe, alleging that it was a Russian influence operation. Days later and in connection with the same revelations, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said Russia had approached and paid MEPs “to promote Russian propaganda.”

Finally, this week, German public prosecutors ordered the arrest of a German national identified as Jian G., working as an assistant to the farright MEP Maximilian Krah of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party — but according to investigators also for Chinese intelligence services.

Krah himself has vehemently denied recent Czech and German media reports suggesting he took money to spread pro-Russian messages. On Wednesday, Krah — a frequent advocate for better relations with both Russia and China — said he would stay on as lead candidate for the AfD in the June 6-9 EU elections but that he would sack his assistant Jian G immediately. Hours later, German public prosecutors announced they had launched a preliminary investigation into Krah.

Parliamentarians themselves are all too aware of how all this looks to voters. “This parliament is under a lot of urgency to clarify what has happened, and then to take consequences,” Terry Reintke, one of the two lead candidates for the Greens, told DW in Strasbourg. “I believe that this investigation should be closed before the European elections, because European citizens deserve to know what is on the ballot paper,” Reintke said Tuesday.

According to a draft resolution seen by DW, MEPs look poised to voice “outrage at the participation of Members of the European Parliament in a pro-Russian media outlet, Voice of Europe, while Russia is leading its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”

“Russia has systematically maintained contacts with far-right and far-left parties, and other personalities and movements to gain support from institutional actors within the Union in order to legitimize its illegal and criminal actions,” the draft statement, set to go to the vote on Thursday and subject to change or rejection, reads.

It’s not just the European Parliament that is apparently of interest. This week alone, arrests of individuals suspected of spying for China were made in Germany and Britain. Beijing has dismissed the accusations as unfounded and politically motivated.

In the European Union, however, it is generally Russian espionage that is the greater concern. An analysis of cases of Europeans convicted of spying between 2010 and 2021 carried out by the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI) found that Moscow was behind most of them. “In times of geopolitical tension, the activity of different countries’ intelligence organizations increases,” Michael Jonsson of FOI said in the mid-2022 report.

This article was provided by Deutsche Welle