Yes, Mr. President

The Tour ended on a high note. We went to the European Parliament for a long day of parliamentary politics. Much has been said about the EU’s democratic deficit—and most of it is true. When the Parliament was first set up in 1952, parliamentarians had no power and operated in an advisory fashion. Even today Members of European Parliament (MEPs) can’t really propose legislation, that’s the job of the Commission. But it was still interesting to hear from their side.

The obvious highlight of the day came in the morning when we met the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering.

For those of us not familiar with the inner workings of European Parliaments (and less face it, Europeans are not even experts as one of our speakers, a communications representative, had to defer to his assistant many times), the President is similar to the Speaker of the House in Canada. He has to make sure order is kept and presides over the session (with its 785 MEPs). His signature is needed on all legislation. It is also the President that represents the Parliament externally and so Pottering gets to travel abroad on the EU’s dime.

And so when he arrived in the small room where we had sat for 20 minutes awaiting his arrival, it was like meeting a President of a country, not a Parliament. People who had left the room two minutes earlier to go to the bathroom were quickly ushered back in and the room instantly filled with a dozen more bodies as his entourage flowed in. We stood respectfully when he walked in and clapped after we were introduced. He talked about who he was and the like--and was pretty funny too which was a surprise--but I can’t remember any of it now. What I can remember was the Q&A afterward where I asked him a question. My questions was, “What do you attribute the declining voter turnout in European Union elections to? Especially considering turnout has declined as the Parliament has gotten more power?” The answer: the media. He said voter apathy is a result of the media reporting only bad things about the EU. He then gave an example about how in light of the European Central Banks tenth anniversary a pole found two-thirds of Germans thought the Euro was a good idea. But the paper used as its headline “1/3 of Germans unhappy with Euro.” He ended by saying, “If the media reported better things about the EU, perhaps people would like it more. See what you can do about that.” What’s funny is he didn’t even know I was a journalism student.

The rest of the day paled in comparison. We got to talk to some MEPs (a Irishman, a Brit and a Hungarian). All were great—but especially the Hungarian’s take on Enlargement was irreverent.

Then we saw a plenary session of the Parliament where I was literally 5 minutes away from hearing Javier Solana (aka the EU's foreign ambassador essentially aka an international relations student's idea of heaven) give a progress report to Parliament.