The European Union Parliament Building in Brussels.

I’m a political junkie, I’ll admit it. Wherever I am I follow the local political news. In Maine in August I bought a newspaper each day because this is an election year in the US (just not a presidential election year, so there isn’t as much frenzy). I wanted to see what the candidates for governor were saying about each other – and I really don’t care who the governor of Maine is as long as they still treat us tourists nicely.

So when we visited Brussels I had to visit the European Parliament, which was an eye-opening experience. I had no preconceptions, or maybe it’s just that my preconceptions were wrong. I’m from North America. To me the European Union (EU) is something to be read about in newspapers or perhaps find out about on radio news broadcasts (I generally don’t watch television) but that really has no impact on my daily life. The EU parliamentarians always seemed to me to be out of touch, an opinion based primarily on their hypocrital ban on Canadian seal products, an industry that has been the lifeblood of many small communities for centuries, while allowing the French to force-feeding geese to produce foie gras because it is part of their cultural heritage. Let those parliamentarians who are without sin cast the first stone!

Now I’ve had my eyes opened, and I think maybe ignorance was more blissful. I had expected the EU Parliament to be like the United Nations, with delegates seated by country and looking out for national interests. But that’s not the way it works. The parliamentarians are seated in blocs according to political orientation, left, right, centre, green or whatever. Everyone has a trans-national agenda and works to see it implemented.

I suppose the plus side to that is that there can be a coherent European strategy of sorts. The down side, as I see it, is that there appear to be a lot of attempts at social engineering. If I was French (or German, Greek or whatever) I am not sure I would take kindly to the EU Parliament telling me how to live my life. Bad enough that my own politicians do that!

There is an axiom in public life: “All politics is local.” In order for a politician to be successful they must not lose touch with the people that elected them and must remember that people care most about their immediate area. That is not 100% true of course; some people do show interest in issues beyond their immediate community, but it is local issues that will arouse the most passion. So I found it interesting that at the EU politicians of one stripe or another, who are unable to form government in their home country, can sometimes find enough like minds from other countries to pass legislation to accomplish their agenda in a roundabout fashion, imposing policies they can’t convince their own populace about.

The chamber of the European Parliament in Brussels.

If the intention is to turn Europe into one big homogenous country then such an approach makes sense. But the EU was conceived as a trade and customs union more than anything else, social engineering wasn’t part of the original idea. I suspect someone back in 1958 had the thought “one continent, one country,” but I also suspect that those people kept their mouths shut (for the most part) at the time because most people would not have entertained the idea of surrendering their national sovereignty. Now, more than 55 years later, the EU seems, from what I understood on visiting the Parliament, to have become foremost a tool for social engineering. Since I don`t think that is the role of politicians, I was less than impressed.