How the European Parliament works
Posted By Director on January 21, 2009
New Left Review interviews a member of the European Parliament, Luciana Castellina. If you imagine that the European Parliament democratically represents the interests of the people of Europe, think again. The Parliament represents the proportion of parties in each country, and it has no authority to enact laws. The interview demonstrates that there really is no integration of the European countries at work in the EU Parliamentary project because national culture still determines identity.
“Essentially, what you have is a band of nomads constantly on the move.”
The second half of the interview explains the attempt to block American films and TV from European markets. Free markets favor big producers over small producers, of course, and ultimately the free market kills European culture by replacing it with American culture. This has nothing to do with the superiority of American culture but instead relies on the low-cost advantage and superior distribution networks of U.S. corporations in Europe, as contrasted with the smaller cultural output and distribution network of each European nation.
“In practice, there is very little human contact between deputies of different nationalities…it is very rare to see people of different nationalities dining together.”
An attempt to subsidize “European culture” as a counter to American culture must ultimately fail because there is no such thing as European culture. This hasn’t stopped the Parliamentary committees from funding the homogenization of Europe’s culture. This homogenized Euro-culture is now beginning to be disseminated to the public. Perhaps the younger generation will adopt it, out of ignorance of genuine culture, as has already happened in the United States with pop culture.
“There is much more homogeneity among deputies from the same country than among members of the same political party.”
Programs to fund cross-cultural exchanges end up being “a typical theft by the rich from the poor.” Even if this were not the case, the idealism of cross-cultural exchange sponsored by state bureaucrats can never replace the real stimulus of genre-specific innovations by genuine artists leading to intellectual pilgrimage.
“A certain number of the deputies don’t do anything at all.”
The European Union has made Europe more global, not more European. The ultimate dynamic of this globalization has been to foster a sense of cultural localism as the basis for identity, not Europeanism or globalism or even nationalism. The EU policies favoring immigration have contributed to this trend. “What has European identity become, given that a third is now made up of people of non-European origins?” If the European Union was really about European integration, the EU would not be favoring non-European immigration. Non-European immigration is about destroying Europe, not integrating Europe.
“In commerce, European countries have stronger relations with China than with each other.”
The European Union is not a plan for the unification of Europe, it is the globalist takeover of Europe according the the Club of Rome plans for creating trade zones that can be coordinated under a world government.
The corruption and wasted effort of pan-European institutions may ultimately lead European citizens on an intellectual pilgrimage from brainwashing under socialism to brainwashing under globalism to a respect for localism as the source of all identity and culture.
“Globalization is leading us backwards, into fragmentation and tangled bilateral relations.”