Betrayal of trust in the European Parliament: policymakers’ perceptions of trust following the Qatargate scandal

Abstract Most of the existing studies on political trust focus on citizens’ trust in political institutions. This study shifts this focus to investigate how corruption scandals affect trust among policymakers. The analysis concerns one of the most widely known scandals hitting the European Parliament: the money-for-influence scandal popularly known as “Qatargate.” I argue that group identification helps understand how policymakers described and experienced the Qatargate scandal and how they perceived the scandal effects on trust among policymakers. This study consists of a framing analysis of EP plenary debates on the Qatargate scandal and interviews with key players. This article shows how group belongings help understand the many differences in the ways policymakers saw the causes of corruption, the importance they attached to citizens’ trust in political institutions, and the effects of the scandal on trust among policymakers. While the Qatargate potentially weakened trust among policymakers, trust within party groups often remained strong.