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European Union Parliament Strasbourg - MEP offices, details of a divided democracy and identity by Mauro Bottaro
The European Parliament is deemed to be the cradle of European democracy and popular participation in European affairs on behalf its citizens. I have walked along the corridors of the 15 floors of the Tower Block of the EU Parliament building in Strasbourg, looking into the entrances of the offices of the 750 members of parliament to find signs of “Europeaness” and European politics. In fact, 80 per cent of the doors and antechambers leading to the rooms where the MEPs work, are only identified with a number, leaving no signs of life and giving no hint to the outside of who is inside and what they stand for. However, the other 20 percent of these entrances make up for the rest because they transmit the different souls not only of the nations comprising the EU, but make a specific effort to differentiate the political identities and inspirations which make up the parliamentary groups. Not only this, but from these little stickers, posters, newspaper cut outs left to personalise the non-place antechambers, it is possible to extract the variety of campaigns and background ideologies which are brought forward in the Parliamentary Commissions and by the single MEPs. Only a small percentage of these reach the public and the European electorate, although they are very important from the point of view of human rights and modern participatory mechanisms.
Seeing the variety of ways the MEPs represent their view of Europe, and the EU, the image they give of themselves, the publicity for the ideologies they stand for and the image of their own countries and regions which have sent them to work in the Institutions, it is possible to understand the sheer complexity of the European democratic mechanisms. These appear on one side politically divides, as their member States, but particularly concentrated in maintaining the national and regional identities extremely protected, preserved from the danger of being diluted in the EU cauldron of economic and financial convergence, which in fact is the bulk of the EU’s activity and efforts.
