The European Parliament has been exposed as “an absolute hotbed of harassment” as over a dozen female aides have accused several Member of the European Parliament (MEP) of groping and stalking, media reports said on Sunday. Several victims spoke to The Sunday Times in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
One female employee alleged that a 60-year-old prominent MEP touched her inappropriately. “He was stroking my hair, then my neck, going down my back… I just froze, I was petrified,” she told the paper. “I told my colleague, who said I should report him, but in the end I didn’t… I was afraid of losing my job, of facing the embarrassment and ruining my career,” she said.
Another woman claimed that a senior MEP masturbated in front her while another aide said a middle-aged politician her. One 24-year-old assistant claimed a German MEP “stalked” her in meetings and eventually made “unpleasant advances”.
Former French environment minister Yves Cochet, 71, sent a 25-year-old female assistant a text chiding her for rejecting a dinner invitation. “I know it’s a cliché, an old man asking out a pretty young woman. But are you afraid of what people will say… do you maybe tremble with a delicious yet disconcerting expectation?” the text, which The Times claims to have seen, read.
An MEP from Germany allegedly touched a 22-year-old assistant of a colleague indecently during a work lunch. The victim claimed the EU parliament is “an absolute hotbed of harassment” because MEPs deliberately hire young female aides and feel they are “not accountable to anyone”.
