A stagiaire who is glad the European Parliament is boring!

Jack Harvel, who is working as a stagiaire for EU Reporter until the end of April 2017, presents his thoughts on working in the EU's political institutions.

I started my internship as a reporter at the European Union during one of its greatest times of crisis since its inception. Growing right-wing forces were upending the liberal order that has long been maintained by the European Union, and I’d get a front row seat to a historical shift in thinking.

As an American, it was one of the few times people stateside would even be familiar with the issues facing the European Union. Yet, even in this tumultuous period the workings of the EU remain painfully bureaucratic.

Yes, the European Parliament is boring. But it should be. It is 28 states, 23 languages, and a massive plurality of cultures and constituencies working towards agreements. A drawn out process is exactly what is necessary to keep it afloat. Not that it isn’t tiresome and overly complicated, but when deciding the laws that apply to people from Ireland to Slovenia it has to be.

I realize how privileged I am to be here, though. Back in the states as a student I was covering local issues in the town of Columbia, Missouri. There it was local difference in education spending, how single mothers use public subsidies and local comic book conventions. Here I’m talking about the international implications of protectionism with leaders of the free world. Most of them have the same thing on their mind, a growing wave of Euroscepticism and right-wing protectionism.

To be honest, when I arrived in Europe I was hoping to get away from the endless flow of news about Donald Trump. Unfortunately, he is impossible to escape. Even here he is not just dominating the news, he is dominating conversation.  Often-times the first thing people ask me here is whether or not I voted for Trump. What follows is usually a tirade against the new Commander in Chief.

But I usually like to turn that around and remind them that Trump is part of a global phenomenon. He is joined by like-minded politicians in France, the UK, the Netherlands and beyond. These movements aren’t solely an American or European problem.

In Brussels more than Washington, though, the problem is subdued. There are Socialists, Greens, Democrats and Conservative politicians who are all aligned against the new wave of protectionists. If I had only my personal experience to go off of, I wouldn’t realize how big the threat is. If the news featured as many members of Socialists and Democrats, Greens and mainstream conservatives as it did members of UKIP and Front Nationale we’d be bored with business as usual right now.

For my first interview I spoke to a German Christian Democrat named David McAllister at the parliament. The interview was about Trump’s crticisms of the European Union and NATO. Despite his disagreements he still wanted to convey the path he believed was right. He didn’t devolve into a critique of the other side nor did he withhold what he believed were the current problems of the EU.

During a phone call the next day my mother asked: “Why can’t we have a politician like that in the United States? Someone that’s calm, level headed and diplomatic.”

The answer is that unity is a necessity for most MEPs. They have to be pragmatic because they are in a pluralistic political system. McAllister has to reach compromise with several parties of different nations. They have to find the middle ground with both domestic and international colleagues. This diversity of opinion seems to pull politicians to the middle.

This is all – like I said before – boring in process. And it doesn’t guarantee extremist parties can’t influence the mainstream. You can look at nationalism in France, Holland and the UK to see the increased acceptability of “home-grown values” as we’d call them in the states. But it has a steeper hill to climb here in Europe.

But extremism isn’t mainstream in Europe, yet. And it doesn’t look like the far-right can coopt conservatives like they have in America. You have the long, tired and boring process of the EU to thank for that.

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