EU Bribery Scandal

That, I would agree on, yes. It's definitely a stain on the European Parliament as a whole if they have corrupt MEPs among their ranks and it doesn't look good that a vice president might be involved.

There are clearly issues with lobbying and / or bribes in the European Parliament, though how widespread remains to ascertain. There are 700 MEPs but only a small number of implicated ones - it seems the Qataris may have been engaging in the equivalent of "sports washing" i.e. trying to improve their image on the international stage, perhaps get these guys to speak up in favour of the country in the Parliament or something.

But this is not a story about the EU. Nigel Farage and Ann Widdecombe could theoretically have been two of the MEPs accepting bribes from the Qataris at some point....would that prove the EU was corrupt?

You can assume that there will be attempts to corrupt governmental institutions. Finding evidence of such attempts is surprising and, to be honest, not that shocking.

The real issues are, (a) how do the authorities react to corruption attempts, and (b) how successful are such attempts?

As to reaction, the EU has reacted vigorously on this occasion — multiple arrests, immediate suspension of the MEP concerned from her parliamentary Vice-President position in a vote passed by a large majority, pressure on her to resign from parliament altogether. This contrasts favourably with reactions in some member states (and former member states; contrast the treatment afforded to Eva Kaili with Boris Johnson's attempts to protect Owen Paterson).

As to how successful the attempt was, we don't know the answer to that yet. To what extent did the Qataris get what they were trying to buy? We don't even know what it was they were trying to buy, much less whether they got it. In general this can be a problem, because a lot of corruption is not specifically goal-oriented. A property developer might pay someone a wodge of money in order to secure approval of this particule planning application, and that does happen. But I think much more common is the payment of money, provisions of gifts, etc to secure a generally favourable attitude. Specific favours might be called in later, or they might not. If they are, there may be no obvious link to the money or gifts, which may be well in the past, and may indeed have been openly declared at the time.