International

The SP believes that it’s important that people can learn about history. Though it’s true that it never repeats itself in quite the same way, without any knowledge of history it’s difficult to fathom what’s going on in our own times. Despite this, I have systematically voted against the House of European History. Not only because establishing such a facility should not be one of the European Parliament’s core tasks, but above all because it threatens to become one big propaganda machine. A slanted account of history is something we don’t need. It would be a complete waste of money.

A few years ago the European Parliament to bring into use the ‘Parlementarium’. I repeatedly gave this the benefit of the doubt, because what was involved was a permanent exhibition clarifying just what goes on in the European Parliament. Quite a few tourists end up at the EP, and unless they have previously arranged to do so, they are not allowed to go in. The Parlementarium therefore promised results. Yet there’s something quite silly going on with this exhibition. In truth it didn’t strike me straight away, but the whole of European history prior to the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community is cast in gloomy tones. The section of the exhibition that concerns the present European Union is full colour and you can also stretch out and look at ‘Europeans’ recounting how the EU has improved their lives.

Criticism of the way in which the European Constitution was imposed via the Lisbon Treaty is nowhere to be seen at this exhibition. Not a word, either, about the austerity policies laid down by Brussels, or about exploitation and repression in the labour market. The protest against the Free trade and investment agreement with the US? The exhibition doesn’t see it as worth the bother. In short, what could at its best have been a friendly initiative aimed at telling tourists something about the EP has become a Europhile’s toy.

The same thing is going to happen now with the House of European History which will open at the end of 2015, and which is also very close to the EP complex. Of course critical questions have been posed in the Parliament on the costs attached to this project, which all told amount to €75 million for the renovation and redesign of the building, but at the same time a majority turns out to be in favour, nevertheless, of going through with it. From an internal document that I saw this week, it seems that the setup will indeed be the same as in the Parlementarium: a dull bit that illustrates history before the European Coal and Steel Community and then an interactive and ‘nice’ bit about the European Union. So there too the central message is that before European integration there was a load of trouble, but now peace reigns, thanks to the EU.

Evidently it’s hard for Euro-MPs to understand that you won’t get anywhere with the public by this kind of ‘broadcasting’. They find this, quite rightly, a waste of money. But it is for these same Euro-MPs not always attractive to listen to the increasingly critical noises emanating from European societies. They’d rather turn a deaf ear to these. Instead of spending €75 million on an unnecessary ‘museum’, they could have put the money to better use buying hearing aids for my selectively deaf colleagues.