52 Europe The Economist May 21st 2022
Giving faces to “faceless Eurocrats”
A
side from war, illness and retirement planning, nothing can
possibly be less funny than a “trilogue”. This arcane facet of
lawmaking in the euinvolves shutting elected meps, officials rep
resenting the bloc’s 27 member states and boffins from the Euro
pean Commission in a room until a deal is thrashed out, often late
at night. The forging of crossinstitutional consensus over Article
225(b) is more likely to induce sleep than laughter. So to devise an
entire tenepisode sitcom about the way the eu’s laws are craft
ed—centred ona trilogue on fisheries regulation, no less—is to
venture near some of comedy’s outer limits. “Parlement”, a multi
lingual satirical show whose second season is out this month,
takes a crack at turning Brussels into a punchline. For fans of the
eu, it is a serious moment.
Politics often makes for good television. The corridors of pow
er are naturally rich in scheming, conflict and comically colossal
egos. A fasttalking, starryeyed version of American politics kept
viewers riveted through seven seasons of “The West Wing”. “Bor
gen” made Danish politics seem more conspiratorial than it prob
ably is. “House of Cards”, a British show later remade in America,
dripped with sexy intrigue.But what happens in Brussels has until
now stayed in Brussels. Who would watch secondtier politicians
fighting over whether a directive needs to be turned into a regula
tion? Incessant calls for more power to be turned over to European
institutions lack a certain dramatic impact. Forget the clashes that
bring national politics to life: the eufrom the outset has been
about taking emotions out of governing. “Less war, more commit
tee meetings” sums it up.
“Parlement”, a joint French, German and Belgian production
sadly only available for now in those countries (plus Spain and
America), revolves around a young assistant to a Euromp who
gets caught up in the HeathRobinson procedures that turn ideas
into law. Even a plain, unembellished description of the process
would be dismissed by outsiders as implausible. Does the Euro
pean Parliament really shuffle every month between two fully
equipped venues, in Strasbourg and Brussels, with a large secre
tariat based in Luxembourg? Have amendments penned by lobby
ists genuinely ended up copypasted into eulaw by unwitting par
liamentarians? How is it that so many people in Brussels speakfour different European languages, but have a foreign accent in all
of them? And surely no institution needs 14 vicepresidents, not to
mention five quaestors, whatever they may be?
Satire turns out to be a good prism through which to inspect
the Brussels bubble—perhaps because it is so close to the truth. In
“Yes Minister”, a British classic from the 1980s, civil servants run
rings around hapless ministers, showing the world where power
really lies. More recently “The Thick of It” and its American off
shoot, “Veep”, have elicited chuckles by depicting politicians who
think themselves destined for greatness getting bogged down in
daytoday mishaps. The big idea behind “Parlement” is that the
euis, after all, human. Those faceless Eurocrats are real people
who have dragged their families to a charmless district of Bel
gium’s rainsoaked capital in the hope that Europe will progress
beyond nationalism. Who is flirting with whom and which com
mittee chair holds a grudge against which diplomat matters just as
much as the findings of all those longwinded impact assessment
reports. (Also, a cadre of Germans secretly runs the place.)
The show is befittingly multilingual, flitting between French,
English, German and a smattering of the eu’s other 21 official lan
guages. The texture of the euis impeccably rendered, unsurpris
ingly given that a couple of Eurocrats are among the show’s writ
ing team (one of them once honed his wit at The Economist). One
advantage of the European Parliament’s nomadic ways is that one
of its two debating chambers is always empty, and so can be
turned over to film crews. Familiar faces spring up as cameos, al
beit featuring “stars” recognisable only to eu nerds. The dastardly
French minister for European affairs who features in the series is
played by Clément Beaune, the outgoing (and notsodastardly)
French minister for European affairs.
Many of the ways “Parlement” needles euofficialdom ought to
infuriate those it depicts. No national stereotype is left unexploit
ed: the few Brits who remain in Brussels are usually sozzled; the
Germans are stern; the French turtlenecked and the Italians end
lessly dissatisfied with the coffee. meps in the show range from
the feckless to the careerist by way of the delusionally earnest. Un
elected officials nudge policymaking to suit their own interests.
Elected ones dispatched from national capitals are inevitably
manoeuvring to further their own government’s agenda—while
painting their actions as serving the greater European good.
Even such fictional potshots have irked some in Brussels, a
thinskinned place that too often confuses legitimate criticism of
some misguided eupolicy with an attack on the entire idea of
European integration. Better would be to recognise the show’s
welcome irreverence as disguised flattery: only the powerful are
worth satirising. Brussels is easily annoyed about being mocked,
but its true fear is being ignored.eumust be joking
Plenty of builders of the European project bemoan the lack of a
common culture that ties the continent together. Beyond the odd
football tournament, the Eurovision song contest and whatever
Netflix is serving up, Europeans rarely tune in to the same tele
vision fare. Surely a multilingual television show poking fun at
the one thing all Europeans have in common—their 705 meps,
their dozens of commissioners and the thousands of hangers
on—is the way to forge a unified European demos? But steady on.
Sometimes it is better just to laugh at a joke than to deconstructit.
“Parlement”, whose third season is currently in the works, earns
its laughs precisely because it doesn’t take the eutoo seriously.nCharlemagne
A sitcom mocks the Brussels bubble