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.
