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Silvana Koch-Mehrin: resign now
I first wrote about the Silvana Koch-Mehrin plagiarism case on 12th May, the day she chose to resign her positions in the FDP and as Vice President of the European Parliament. Notably she remained a MEP at this stage, saying that the resignations were to protect her family and the party and, by extension, were not an admission of guilt.
Today the University of Heidelberg has withdrawn Silvana’s doctorate, judging that “substantial parts” of her thesis were copied, and that it did not qualify as an “independent academic work” (selbständige wissenschaftliche Arbeit). News from Süddeutsche and Spiegel in German.
Silvana: you cheated.
Why is this important? Firstly, because a Member of the European Parliament needs to be trusted by the electorate. If she has been shown to be untruthful in her own academic work, what else has she been untruthful about? This was the reason that Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned all political offices. A Member of the European Parliament is paid more than €6000 / month, financed by the taxpayer. Secondly, Silvana was elected while making use of her title on all campaign material, as the picture above shows. Elect this responsible academically-qualified person to the EP! Only it wasn’t so.
So for the sake of the EU’s citizens, and for the sake of the European Parliament and the FDP, Silvana should immediately resign as a MEP.
Photo: Liberale “Freiheitstruck on tour”
May 18, 2009 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution
May 18, 2009 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution
22nd June – a day of web activity for an open and honest European Parliament?
It has not been a good few months for the European Parliament, and today probably tops all of the days for stories that show the EP in a bad light.
As Jason O’Mahony points out, the EP lost the Toland Case in the ECJ yet still refuses to publish the report in question. Diana Wallis MEP on Twitter explains the next steps:
@jonworth ECJ judgement in Toland case relating to 2006 discharge audit report will be discussed by EP bureau at next meeting on 22nd June
@dianawallismep
Diana Wallis
The irony of this (not lost on Bruno), on the day that the EP proposed a 5% increase in the EU’s budget for the financial perspectives 2014 onwards. The report in question has, before the case, been leaked.
Elsewhere in EP business, the welcome vote by the EP to express it’s opposition to the Strasbourg seat of the Parliament was overshadowed by Martin Schulz, future President of the Parliament (unless anyone musters up the guts to oppose him), who declined to vote on the issue. Excellent analysis of this from Michiel van Hulten.
All of this follows the fallout from the Cash for Laws scandal with one of the MEPs involved – Adrian Severin – still a MEP. Silvana Koch-Mehrin is also, for now, still a MEP despite scandals, and that issue will come to a head this month.
So here’s a small suggestion… Get as many bloggers as possible to focus on the issues of trust, transparency and openness of the European Parliament on 22nd June, the day the bureau of the EP is to meet to discuss this. With a few dozen blog entries across multiple blogs, and a bunch of tweets, we should manage to focus some press attention on these issues for that day. Who’s in?
Silvana first, FDP second… European citizens last
I’m not the biggest fan of German liberal MEP Silvana Koch-Mehrin. She was involved with a spat with bloggers prior to the 2009 European elections and was not open and transparent at that time, and she’s the sort of ultra-professional, arrogant FDP politician I cannot abide.
So I smiled when she became embroiled in a plagiarism row about her PhD thesis, similar to Guttenberg, culminating in her resignation yesterday from all positions within the FDP.
Only there’s a problem.
Delightful irony as Koch-Mehrin runs an event on openness and suffers from it simultaneously
Thursday 12th April and Dr. Silvana Koch-Mehrin MEP runs an event in the European Parliament entitled “The New Rules of Openness”, together with LibertyGlobal. The poster advertising the event is shown above.
The very same day the Vroni-Plag Wiki released its first analysis of Koch-Mehrin’s PhD thesis, an analysis that has been updated since then, reaching today the answer that 56 of the 201 pages of the work contain plagiarism. The latest on the issue from Local.de.
Surely a wiki – a new form of political openness – should be welcomed in the context of Koch-Mehrin’s event? So what has she said about the allegations? Absolutely nothing.
As if that were not irony enough, Koch-Mehrin does not have a stellar record of openness as it is, having been embroiled in a legal fight about attendance records and financial interests before the 2009 European elections.
If Koch-Mehrin thinks that by keeping her head down all of this is simply going to blow over she’s going to be sorely disappointed. With any luck the forthcoming Heidelberg University report will confirm plagiarism and, at the least, her reputation will be severely tainted. Chances are she will go the same way as zu Guttenberg, and I sure won’t mourn her departure from the EP.
Silvana’s internet Koch-up
Silvana Koch-Mehrin amended poster - netzpolitik.org
Just a few days before the European Parliament elections in Germany (polling day there is Sunday 7th June) there’s an interesting story brewing about the liberals’ (FDP) lead candidate Silvana Koch-Mehrin – I’ve posted a little about this before. It’s one of those interesting cases where a politician getting things wrong online can provoke a vicious counter-reaction – it’s about time this happened in German politics where the political class is arguably even less web-savvy than elsewhere in Europe.
The story started some six weeks ago when the website Parlorama published attendance records of all MEPs. This showed Koch-Mehrin attending 41% of plenary sessions, one of the lowest attendance records of any MEP. Her reasoning? The birth of two children duing the election period, hence lower attendance in the EP as MEPs have no proper maternity leave arrangements. Problem for Silvana is that a couple of other MEPs have also had babies but still managed much higher attendance than she did – Angelika Niebler at 84% and Lívia Járóka at 78%.