Charlemagne. A crucible – or a zoo?

Odd behaviour is the only thing that stirs interest in the European Parliament

THE European Parliament building in Strasbourg is a tough place to find your way around at the best of times. It is a baffling combination of towers, hemicycles, courtyards, conference rooms and tree-filled atriums, all linked together by glass lifts and dark, leather-lined corridors. Even veteran members of the European Parliament (MEPs) can lose their way, particularly since they only use the place four days a month - spending the rest of the time at their other vast headquarters in Brussels. But this week the Strasbourg building was unusually full of lost-looking people. That is because a new batch of MEPs has just arrived in office, following last month's elections. The addition of ten new countries to the European Union in May - plus a high rate of turnover among the 15 older members - means that fully 70% of the 732 politicians who turned up in Strasbourg were entirely new to the place.

A first day at school always generates excitement. But the parliament also has real reasons to be upbeat about its future. For its newly elected president, Josép Borrell, a Spanish Socialist who is himself a newcomer to the parliament, it is the “crucible of a supranational democracy”. Once a talking shop, the parliament's powers have steadily expanded over the past 20 years. It now plays a vital role in shaping laws on everything from business to the environment and the EU budget. The European constitution, if approved, will further expand the parliament's powers. On July 22nd - as The Economist went to press - the parliament was due to vote on whether to approve José Manuel Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister, as the new president of the European Commission. Mr Barroso was expected to win, which is just as well since a “no” would plunge the Union into crisis.

There is only one flaw in this rosy vision of a parliament growing in power and confidence as it assumes its role at the centre of a supranational democracy. The parliament lacks an element that is crucial to any really healthy democracy, namely public interest and engagement. Even as the parliament's powers have grown, turnout in European elections has steadily fallen. In last month's poll it fell to a new low of 46%. Not bad, perhaps, by American standards - but much lower than the average in national elections in Europe. As a succession of disillusioned young politicians have discovered, the European Parliament is a great place if you like complex committee work, schmoozing in bars or claiming generous expenses - but it is an impossible place to build a political reputation. The excited new MEPs who crossed the threshold this week would be less upbeat if they knew they were entering the political equivalent of the Bermuda triangle.

The election of Mr Borrell as the parliament's new president demonstrated a lot that is wrong with the place. As Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Greens in the parliament, put it with cruel accuracy, the parliament faced a choice between “a little bureaucrat and an historic figure”. It plumped for the bureaucrat. By choosing Mr Borrell over Bronislaw Geremek, who played a vital role in the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, the parliament fluffed a chance to appoint someone with real moral stature, and to demonstrate that west Europeans mean those warm words about the “reunification of Europe”.

Mr Borrell may raise the parliament's profile in a different way. Although he is a graduate of Stanford University in California, he is also a fierce critic of American foreign policy whose main weapon against the Geremek challenge was reminding colleagues that the Pole had supported the Iraq war. For good measure he added that one of his goals was to prevent the EU becoming a “Trojan horse for neo-liberalism”.

Freaky ways to fight boredom

Such over-heated rhetoric - and the conflicts it can generate - may, alas, be the best way for the European Parliament to win attention. The only time in the last parliamentary term that a debate aroused real interest across Europe was when Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, compared a German deputy to the commandant of a concentration camp. The prospect of more memorable moments has been boosted by the arrival in the parliament of a promising crop of extremists and eccentrics. There is Alessandra Mussolini, who as the grand-daughter of the late Italian dictator is a reminder of Italy's own fascist past. There is a clutch of far-rightists from France, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the French National Front, and his daughter, Marine. Six populists from Poland's Self-Defence party are said to have a penchant for lobbing potatoes.

And then there is the arrival of 11 members from the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which wants Britain to quit the EU. The party's most famous member is Robert Kilroy-Silk, a sleek perma-tanned former TV host. But in recent days he was upstaged by two lesser-known UKIP MEPs: Ashley Mote, who was booted out of the party even before arriving in Strasbourg, after being accused of welfare fraud; and his colleague, Godfrey Bloom, who grabbed headlines by joining the parliament's women's committee and announcing that one of his goals was to persuade more women to “clean behind the fridge”. For good measure he added that no small business in its right mind would hire a woman of child-bearing age.

Such antics guarantee front-page coverage for the European Parliament in Britain. But UKIP is not big news elsewhere in Europe. Indeed, the main problem for the parliament's ambition to become the centre of a great pan-European deliberation is the fragmentation caused by the lack of any pan-European media, and Europe's wide variety of languages and cultures. For this reason, Mr Borrell's ambition to see the parliament become “the crucible of supranational democracy” seems unlikely to be realised. Still, the parliament may turn out to have a promising alternative future - as a political freak-show.

Commentary feature. Odd behaviour is the only thing which stirs interest in the European Parliament. Articles discusses the challenges facing the European Parliament in raising the interest and notice of the outside world.

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