But European corruption is so tastefully done

A couple of weeks ago, the European Parliament was seeking to dictate how many hours a week residents of the United Kingdom could work. But Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) reports on a much more pressing long-term agenda -- watering down of money laundering regulations by legislators who are directly collecting income from the finance industry and submitting legislative amendments that come verbatim from lobbyists. To be clear, the financial industry is perfectly entitled to be against tougher laundering rules, given the bureaucratic burden they impose. But the fox is well and truly inside the henhouse in the process from which the parliament's legislation on the topic has emerged:

One venue for critics of the legislation is a policy-discussion forum run by prominent Brussels banking lobbyist John Houston and funded by many of his clients. The group's chairwoman and several other members are EU lawmakers. Some of them introduced amendments to the bill that were almost identical to drafts circulated by a banking trade group whose members include several clients of Mr. Houston, Parliament records show ... In an interview, Mr. Houston acknowledged that several of his clients are also members of the discussion group he runs, the European Parliamentary Financial Services Forum, but said the group is separate from his lobbying practice. "You are barking up the wrong tree," he said.

Facilitating all this is that Members of the European Parliament have only minimal conflict of interest disclosure requirements, and can be fully engaged in private business while being MEPs at the same time:

Among those who took up the industry group's cause was Parliament member John Purvis of Scotland, a member of Mr. Houston's discussion forum who leads a firm that manages a hedge fund in the tax haven of Luxembourg ... In annual filings with Parliament, Mr. Purvis discloses his role at the hedge fund and in other private businesses, but not his income from them, which isn't required.

To serve our readers, we did a bit of followup that the WSJ didn't report: Purvis is a Tory MEP and his biography reveals a set of Brussels appointments that when combined with his private interests, might even draw a blush from Tom DeLay. But Purvis has no shame:

Mr. Purvis said he has complied with parliamentary rules, and said it is only natural for him to be involved in banking policy. "What about a farmer being involved with agriculture?" he asked. "I think you are climbing up a gum tree."

Clearly, one of the lobbyist talking points that went around was to refute all allegations of conflict of interest with tree references. Anyway, in the tradition of the Euro-gravy train, the loot is being spread around:

Parliament member Jean-Paul Gauzès of France offered similar amendments on trust disclosure. He works in Paris as director of legal and tax affairs for Dexia Credit Local, the municipal-bond unit of Franco-Belgian retail banking powerhouse Dexia Group, which is currently being investigated in Belgium for suspected money laundering ... Mr. Gauzès doesn't disclose the amount of salary he gets from Dexia. He wrote in an email that it is "commensurate with the work," and added that "I exercise my mandate as a member of Parliament in all independence and I do not believe that, in principle, there is a conflict of interest."

By our count, he's left himself 3 outs just in that one quote, and indeed leaves open the implication that he's on some kind of fee-for-service deal with Dexia on his parliamentary work. There can't be a conflict of interest if you only have one client!

Remember: The EU parliament gets more power under the European Union constitution.