Four things we learn about the EU by watching the France Télévisions series

• Put on line a few days ago on the France Télévisions website, a TV series examines the work of an MEP and his parliamentary collaborator, Samy.
• “Parliament” takes us to the heart of the European institutions, between Brussels and Strasbourg.
• The series is a wealth of information on the making of laws by the European Union.

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While the European Union is trying to organize facing the epidemic of
coronavirus, a new TV series humorously reveals behind the scenes of Brussels’ parliamentary cuisine. Available exclusively from April 9 on the France Télévisions website,
Parliament follows a young parliamentary collaborator in the corridors of the Union’s legislative body. If you think you’re bored in the EU’s capital, this series could make you change your mind. And for those who understand nothing about the functioning of the European institutions, Parliament is a wealth of information, hyper realistic because the series was filmed in the real premises of the European Parliament, in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Getting an amendment voted is an obstacle course

Samy arrives in Brussels to be the assistant to Michel Specklin, a French MEP not frankly passionate about his mandate. “I have been here for three years. Now is not the time to ask how it works! “Confides the elected official. The young man then understands that he will have to fend for himself to understand the complex cogs of the EU and the delicate power plays and alliances which are played with 28, against the background of Brexit.

It will take him all season to vote for a single amendment, banning “finning”, a practice of fishing for sharks, cutting their fins to sell them on the Chinese market, and then throwing the mutilated fish into the sea. A story inspired by reality, since fin fishing was banned by the EU in 2013.

We follow in a fun way the course of the amendment, the commission “Fishing” for the vote in plenary, via the “conciliation committee”. All the Brussels jargon is there, without making the series indigestible. To get the support of a majority of MEPs, countries and
from different parties, Samy will have to use persuasion, and avoid the traps set by his opponents. And once the amendment has passed
European Parliamentit must then obtain the approval of the Council of the EU, that is to say of the member states. A long way before finning is finally banned in the 28’s.

Better to be multilingual in Brussels

The international cast and multilingual dialogues give Parliament false airs of The Spanish inn, especially since parliamentary staff are, for the most part, younger than the deputies they assist. We laugh in French, in English, in German, which are the three working languages ​​of the European institutions. While the EU has 24 official languages, only plenary sessions of Parliament, as well as meetings of the Conference of Presidents and the bureau, are systematically interpreted in all of these languages.

Lobbyists are present

Private lobbies are ready to do anything to influence decisions taken in Brussels and Strasbourg. Their emissaries meet with elected officials, hang out in the cafeteria and are sometimes so charming and undetectable that Samy gets caught there, for lack of experience. Trapped by a pro-fishing lobbyist who presents himself as an Italian parliamentary collaborator, the hero cut and paste of the amendments in the report of his MEP, who then fails to be severely punished.

If Samy manages to catch up in extremis to his terrible fault, the series is inspired by real facts, at European Parliament and
in France. But this practice, regularly denounced by associations, is more and more controlled.

European officials pay taxes

If you want to piss off someone who works in the European Parliament, say they don’t pay taxes. This is the trick used in episode 8 by a German MEP. To verify that the official present with her in the elevator does not understand German, and therefore can not understand the political ploy that she charges to her interlocutor on the phone, she swings this short sentence in the language of Goethe. The man remains impassive, and the parliamentarian is convinced that he does not understand anything in German (error …).

In reality, MEPs from the EU pay European tax and social security contributions, deducted directly from their remuneration. Their net pay, of 6,824.85 euros monthly, is then taxable by the tax authorities of their country of residence.