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SHAPING UP TO THE NEW EUROPE
Lights! Camera! Action! The circus is back in
town! The new, massively enlarged European Parliament,
returned to work in Strasbourg last week, following
the elections in June. 732 MEPs blocked the lifts,
crammed the corridors and filled the debating
chamber to overflowing. The invasion of a huge
army of politicians and bureaucrats brought traffic
in this quiet provincial French city to a virtual
standstill. Elite troops from the French Foreign
Legion stood guard against possible terrorist
attacks at the entrance to the great courtyard,
sweating as temperatures soared over 32 degrees.
Heavily armed security personnel tramped across
the rooftops, scanning the streets below with
binoculars.
Inside the parliament, despite the air conditioning,
temperatures also soared! The newly elected MEPs,
representing 450 million people from 25 different
countries, together with the battalions of attendant
staff and civil servants, have to work in 20 different
languages. Teams of interpreters and translators
toil around the clock, churning out tens of millions
of words daily. A mountain of paper is stuffed
every morning into rows of pigeon-holes, much
of it destined to be dumped into over-flowing
waste bins, as this modern Tower of Babel goes
about its business.
60% of the MEPs are new to the job. Sitting at
the back of the House alongside Kilroy-Silk and
his rag-tag band of UKIP MEPs is Allessandra Mussolini,
grand-daughter of the Fascist Dictator and niece
of Sophia-Loren. Already she has fallen out with
her UKIP colleagues. She launched a furious attack
on UKIP's Godfrey Bloom for his Neanderthal sexist
comments following his appointment to serve on
the Women's Rights Committee. Miss Mussolini was
outraged at comments by Bloom that women might
wish to clean behind their fridges and make sure
their men's supper was cooked and on the table
every evening! Alessandra Mussolini shouted that
she was from Naples, where women knew how to cook,
clean and be politicians! "Mr Bloom"
she roared "wouldn't know where to find the
fridge in his own house!"
Sitting between Kilroy and Mussolini are Jean-Marie
Le Pen and his daughter Marine, both representing
the fascist French National Front. The Le Pen's
and some of the Basque MEPs are conspicuous because
they are always accompanied by burly bodyguards.
Amongst the other new MEPs, former government
ministers jostle for space on the benches with
TV personalities, professors, judges and lawyers.
All human life is here. Once again the centre-right
EPP-ED (European People's Party - European Democrats)
group is the largest in the House with 267 members.
The Socialists are next with 200 and the Liberals
with 81 are in third place. Various shades of
green and red make up the remainder. Because no
single political group has enough members to form
an actual majority, complex political deals are
constantly being cut. The centre-right EPP-ED
agreed to back the socialist candidate for President
of the Parliament, in return for socialist backing
for a Conservative President for the European
Commission. As a result of this deal, Josep Borrell,
a 57 year old former minister in the Spanish Government,
found himself taking the chair of the opening
plenary session of the Parliament on his very
first day as an MEP. His attempts to control the
unruly horde of MEPs was frustrated by the complete
breakdown of the electronic voting machines. Meanwhile,
the former Conservative Prime Minister of Portugal,
Jose Manuel Barroso, was voted in as President
of the all-powerful European Commission, despite
a last-minute revolt by some disaffected socialists,
disturbed by his record as a pro-American, pro-Iraq
war, liberal free-trader.
Mr Barroso will remain in charge of the Commission
for five years, stamping his authority on the
future shape and direction of Europe, following
the disastrous Romano Prodi regime. In his first
major speech to the Parliament, he said he regretted
the low turnout in the European elections, but
that we must "listen to the silence of those
who didn't vote." A very fair point, although
he won't need to listen to silence in the European
Parliament in Strasbourg. The sound of silence
is always drowned out by the hullabaloo!
STRUAN STEVENSON MEP
Struan Stevenson has just been
re-elected to serve as a Conservative MEP for
Scotland. It will be his second 5-year term. He
is a member of the Fisheries, Employment &
Social Affairs and Agriculture Committees and
Conservative Front-Bench Spokesman on Fisheries.
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