International

Somebody wrote to the national newspaper, De Telegraaf, as follows: ‘After the European elections you hear no more from the elected Euro-MPs. They simply go off and enjoy sitting in the sun, and meanwhile line their pockets.’ Blimey, not very encouraging if you’re just starting, as I am, a new term of office. After all the publicity it’s been given, everyone should know that the SP’s elected representatives never line their pockets, and that includes the Euro-MPs. The party’s rules and practices ensure that we all receive an income based on the average Dutch skilled worker’s wage. But that things have gone relatively quiet is true enough. The reason for this, however, is that the weeks following the elections are largely taken up with the need to deal with internal matters. So below is an overview of that process, and a little bit of an explanation for the benefit of the writer of that letter.

Actually, after elections everything in the European Parliament is up in the air. New parties arrive, and these can choose their political group or opt to remain independent. The groups are keen to be as big as possible and so there’s a bit of a scrap over new parties to get them on board. Even parties who were in a political group in the last parliament are given the come on by groups if they hold the balance and could conceivably feel at home in another political ‘family’. You can see this in the case of Bart de Wever’s New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) from Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking North. This party was in the Green group, but it seems that it would feel more comfortable with the Conservatives.

As soon as the negotiations between the political groups and the individual parties are completed, you know just how big each group will be. A lot depends on this, as the biggest groups get the most central offices and the most important functions within the EP (vice-presidents, chairs of parliamentary committees etc.). Furthermore, the bigger a group, the more places it gets in each of the various parliamentary committees.

Once all of this has become clear, the groups can get down to work. A president is elected for each group, vice-presidents are put forward, and the MEPs can state which committees they’d ideally like to sit on. This is extremely important for transparency. I was spokesman for our group on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, and so got relatively extensive media coverage in the relevant policy areas. There are always more people than places available, so negotiations are also needed when it comes to membership of committees.

Lastly, every national delegation, including the SP, has to get its own team in order. Election time is of course an occasion for workers in the team to think about their own futures, about whether they want to do another five years in the EP or is this perhaps an opportune moment to change jobs and work elsewhere. In our case we had also a new MEP, Anne-Marie Mineur, and thus room for more new staff.

In short, a great deal has to be sorted out during these weeks. Not all of this is visible to the outside world, but nobody can stand aside from it, or you can be sure that you’d be put on to the least interesting committees and go months without decent staff, to name just a couple of problems. So for the gentleman who wrote to De Telegraaf, I have a clear message: SP members won’t be lining their pockets, and are just as unlikely to laze about after elections. It’s just that it’s not of much interest to the media how the EP deals with its internal organisation, so you don’t hear much about that. Yet these are, just the same, crucial weeks for every – serious – Euro-MP.