Boring plenary debates? Get rid of the MEPs

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Maroš Šefčovič ending his speech at a nearly empty European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg on Tuesday (Source: European Parliament)

EU politics

Boring plenary debates? Get rid of the MEPs

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By Nikolaj Nielsen,
Brussels
,

The European Parliament is back in Strasbourg this week and if history has any bearing, then many (if not most) MEPs will be absent during the heavily-scripted debates.

Some will complain they have too many meetings, which is entirely plausible. But I have also seen MEPs in Strasbourg city centre carrying shopping bags during plenary sessions.

Bas Eickhout, a Dutch Green MEP, offered an interesting solution to a problem that has bemused observers for well over a decade. Get rid of the MEPs.

Eickhout proposed that each political group designate a single representative to engage in hour-long (or slightly longer) debates with the European Commission on key policy issues.

Once over, other MEPs can make their one-minute speeches if they so choose.

“The commission is also not taking the debate seriously, they’re just sitting there for three hours, and at the end they read out a script that was prepared beforehand,” he said.

“We all know that is all a bit of a fake setting.”

It is an astonishing admission of a plenary that prides itself of speaking on behalf of the European public.

But if MEPs don’t take the plenary debate seriously, then why should anyone else?

Rough estimates suggest the four-day plenary session in Strasbourg costs the public up to €10m. There are 12 sessions spread throughout the year.

The snooze-fest was no different on Tuesday’s (19 May) debate on ‘EU Governance under Pressure – Institutional Responses to Global Challenges.’
Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s trade commissioner, read his lacklustre speech to another near-empty chamber.

So too did MEPs that were actually present, followed by a few sporadic bouts of applause from a handful of counterparts.

By all accounts, it would appear the ceremony honouring 20 people with the so-called European Order of Merit, including former German chancellor Angela Merkel and Irish rock star Bono, had attracted a larger audience in the plenary just before Šefčovič had taken the floor.

Thirteen of the 20 actually showed up, celebrated for having helped build Europe by “overcoming crises for a better future for our continent.”

The committee that chose the laureates were also present, helping fill out the front row seats of the chamber.

Among them was former EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso, who famously ended up at US investment bank Goldman Sachs after leaving his post at the Brussels-executive.

Goldman Sachs, as a reminder, was accused of helping the Greek government disguise the true size of its public debt.

The revelations of secret collusion between the Greek government and the bank followed the launch of a global financial crisis that wrecked the country and at a time when Barroso was president of the European Commission.

Building Europe indeed.

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Maroš Šefčovič ending his speech at a nearly empty European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg on Tuesday (Source: European Parliament)

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Author Bio

Nikolaj Nielsen joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.

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