By Jorge Liboreiro
The European Parliament has drawn the curtain. Thursday afternoon saw the last raft of votes of the last plenary session of this legislature. The hemicycle will fast become an empty, quiet place, as lawmakers return to the native countries to campaign ahead of the June elections and assistants rush to send CVs to future employers in case their current ones fail to pass democracy’s highest test.
It’s the end of a term that was, by any standards, absolutely crazy. No, really, it was.
“I would never have been able to predict both how much we managed to achieve, but also how many crises and challenges we’ve had to overcome and to handle,” Roberta Metsola, the Parliament’s president, told us in an interview.
Looking back, one cannot help but feel amazed by the sheer number of transformative laws, political battles, acrimonious hearings, rapturous speeches, PR disasters, sordid scandals and what-the-hell moments that this institution has gone through in just five years.
The razor-thin confirmation of Ursula von der Leyen, who secured only nine votes above the required minimum as MEPs from across the spectrum rebelled against her out-of-the-blue nomination, now reads like a prophecy of all the drama that would soon follow.
Who can forget the conclusion of Brexit, when lawmakers stood up, held hands and belted out a redemption of “Auld Lang Syne,” a song about the end of a long acquaintance? The protracted divorce couldn’t end without tears, even if many in Brussels hid their emotions out of pride.
Then came COVID-19 and the busy hemicycle turned into a ghost town, with their massive rooms filled by selected, mask-clad politicians who tried to go on with their jobs as best as they could. The pandemic pushed the Parliament to the very back of the conversation, which was then head-first focused on national restrictions and growing death tolls.
The media attention came back at the end of 2020 thanks to József Szájer, a five-term MEP from Hungary’s Fidesz party, who was caught fleeing a gay orgy in breach of lockdown measures. Szájer attempted to escape Belgian police through the drainpipe of the apartment and was apprehended with bloody hands and narcotics in his backpack, which he denied using. The story proved simply irresistible for a city numbed by boredom that longed for anything resembling a thrill. The contrast between Szájer’s work and Szájer’s after-work was not lost on readers.
Things changed for the better in 2021, with the roll-out of vaccines allowing a gradual return of parliament activity. But tragedy struck in early 2022 when news arrived that President David Sassoli had died. Widely admired for his easy smile and warm character, his passing shook Brussels to the core. “Europe has lost a leader, democracy has lost a champion and all of us have lost a friend,” Metsola said as she read an eulogy in perfect Italian.
Then, the war came, and nothing was ever the same. The Parliament quickly positioned itself as Ukraine’s most ardent defender, urging member states to approve harsher sanctions and cut off all energy ties with Russia. Ukrainian flags hung on the walls as lawmakers endorsed Kyiv’s membership bid. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s virtual speech in the early days of the invasion, calling on Europe to “prove that you’re with us,” immediately became one of the most memorable pleas in recent memory. Even the translator was audibly moved.
With all eyes on Ukraine, it seemed implausible that they would turn to a distant country like Qatar – but oh boy, turn they did. Bags full of cash, police raids, leaked confessions and love affairs came together to unleash the perfect storm, knocking the Parliament out. The so-called Qatargate forced a reckoning about ethics, transparency and the extent to which the institution was vulnerable to foreign influence, a threat that would come back to haunt in the form of Russiagate and Chinagate.
But there was more, much more: the 9th term featured a furious fight over the Nature Restoration Law that normalised the contestation of the Green Deal, record-breaking negotiations on the Artificial Intelligence Act, a blistering lawsuit against the Commission, a ban on Amazon lobbyists, the use of Pegasus spyware, the first-ever resolution on Greece’s rule of law, a blunt request by Yuliva Navalnaya and a rapturous speech by Cate Blanchett, among others.
Even this week, when everybody was expected to finish business in a calm and collected manner, a Slovak MEP decided to randomly release a dove in the middle of the hemicycle, raising eyebrows and accusations of animal cruelty.
Wild till the very end.
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Spring break after five crazy years
