The so-called "ghost MEPs", as they were known until a few days ago, have finally appeared in Strasbourg. The twenty-seven MEPs elected in May 2019, but forced to wait patiently for Brexit before taking office (see EUROPE 12417/4), met for the first time at the 13 February plenary session and will start their work in committee this week. During this session, EUROPE met some of these new European elected representatives.
Like Alviina Alametsä (Greens/EFA, Finland), who, as soon as she arrives, is already enthusiastically talking about the YouTube channel on behind the scenes at the European Parliament that she is about to launch, the newcomers already seem to be well integrated.
First group meetings, first debates, first press briefings; all quickly made their mark. The task proved to be all the less arduous as some MEPs were already familiar with the institution.
"From my personaI view, I never left the group", said Thomas Waitz (Greens/EFA, Austria), a member of the previous Parliament. Elected co-president of the European Green Party in November 2019, he admits that he has "stayed very close to European politics" during the 8 months of waiting imposed on him.
The same goes for Adrián Vázquez Lázara (Renew Europe, Spain) who, when he was elected in May, had already served for 5 years as head of cabinet of the Ciudadanos delegation to the Parliament and as European adviser to former party president Albert Rivera. His integration, he assures, went smoothly. "For one year, I have been dealing with Luis Garicano, our head of delegation, on all the negotiations when it comes to committees, when it comes to delegation, when it comes to the offices. I know everyone in the group and everyone knows me", he says.
Some see drawbacks to this late arrival, others find it beneficial. While Nora Mebarek (S&D, France) regretted missing the budget negotiations in the REGI Committee, Alviina Alametsä - for whom "to make change you need to be both in the streets and in Parliament" - was pleased to have been able to continue for a few months to take an outside look at this European "system".
"So, you wait for Brexit every morning"
More generally, these incoming deputies agree that their situation is not very delicate. At least now Brexit has been registered and their waiting period is over.
"Other colleagues, who are really here for the first time, didn't know whether they could pick up another job, whether they should settle, whether they should leave. Because it all depended on Brexit", Thomas Waitz points out.
Nora Mebarek, elected local councillor in Arles in 2001, has thus retained her position as "urban renewal project manager" until 1 February. She did not wish to "put (her) life on hold" or give up her local mandate, which, however, "took up a lot of time, especially during the period of municipal elections in France".
Alviina Alametsä has also continued to work "in the mental health sector", while serving as a city councillor in Helsinki.
"The situation I found myself in after the election was more unexpected than anything else: this is my first important position in politics; I didn't engage in calculations as to whether I would be elected or not, I was waiting to see. So it was a real surprise and maybe it made the wait easier", the Finnish member presumed.
The hardest part, says Ilana Cicurel (Renew Europe, France), was not the waiting itself, but "having people approach you saying 'but then you wait for Brexit every morning'". Everyone agrees on this. And they all say it spontaneously: they didn't want to see the British leave. "I feel neither a son nor a product of Brexit. I miss the Brexit". It was in these terms that the Italian MEP, elected on a French list, Sandro Gozi (Renew Europe), introduced himself to the press.
"We didn't wait for Brexit as such. What we feared as a scenario, however, was a Brexit that would pollute the term of office by taking time to set up or a brutal Brexit without an agreement", explains Ilana Cicurel.
Redistribution of committees
During the 8 months of British prevarication, MEPs received no signs or information from Parliament, reports Thomas Waitz. The contact was limited to exchanges with their respective groups in order to define the parliamentary committees that would be assigned to them, but only "when it started to become clear that Brexit was coming", says Mrs Alametsä.
The Finn has been given a place, as she had requested, in the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), where she intends to work on climate diplomacy and on human rights issues. She will also be a substitute member of the Committees on Development (DEVE) and Transport and Tourism (TRAN) and of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE).
"The Secretary General tries to accommodate you as best as possible, but some things are also a compromise", says Waitz. The latter will join the AFET and Petitions (PETI) committees as a permanent member and the SEDE sub-committee as an alternate member "to strengthen green peace policy and non-violent conflict management".
"As I’m coming from a neutral, non-NATO state I think it could have some importance that our voice can be heard", he says. Thomas Waitz is also committed to his work in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI). He has been given an alternate position, but plans to collaborate with his colleague Sarah Wiener (Greens/EFA, Austria), who is a permanent member.
Like their colleagues, Nora Mebarek and Adrián Vázquez Lázara had their wishes respected. The former will sit on the Committee on Regional Development (REGI), but also on the Committee on Fisheries (PECH) and the Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN) as a substitute. The second will be a substitute in the AGRI Committee and a permanent member of the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI), where he hopes to work on the regulation and ethical dimension of artificial intelligence. A wish that will certainly be granted, since he was elected, on Monday 17 February, as chairman of the JURI committee (see EUROPE 12427/30).
Although they already have a clear idea of the positions they intend to defend, the new members will have to wait until their first committee meetings - which will be held this week - to know exactly what issues they will be working on. "Although I’m not ‘new’, I’m ‘new’ when it comes to the colleagues in both AGRI and JURI. So I have to see how I negotiate and which files I can actually pick", explains Adrián Vázquez Lázara.
"Europe has changed"
While the departure of 73 British elected representatives and the arrival of 27 others does not seem to have overly disrupted the organisation of the European Parliament, MEPs, at their level, note certain changes.
Ms Alametsä said that her entry into the Parliament at 27 years of age marked the arrival of a new generation of MEPs in her group and delegation: "we are now three Finns in the Greens, and we each represent a generation". The average age of Finnish MEPs is relatively high, she insists, but "we are also a bit concerned about how young Finnish people see the EU".
When asked about the possible changes to be expected from this reshuffle, Thomas Waitz, who is starting his second term in the Parliament, guarantees that departures and arrivals will not affect the direction of his political group, whose members have similar voting behaviour, he says.
"But politics is always linked to personalities, not only to position. So from that side it will have an impact. Like I really regret that Molly Scott Cato had to leave the European Parliament. She was, in my point of view, one of the smartest and highest-profile Green politicians we had", he laments.
"Brexit is a test from which we will come out of it grown up", Ilana Cicurel wants to believe. A test, she said, "that made us realise that Europe has changed". (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki with Marion Fontana)