Fire, brimstone and books
In the European Parliament’s mid-term elections earlier this month, German Martin Schulz was voted in as its new president. We meet him to discuss life in the hemicycle’s pulpit
Martin Schulz, the newly elected president of the European Parliament, used to be known when he was head of the Socialists & Democrats group as something of a rottweiler, an aggressive fighter for Europe and a fierce opponent of what he termed ‘Wild West Capitalism’.
But when we meet the week before his so-called election to the post of president, he is restraining himself. The five-year presidency mandate has been divided into two terms by the two biggest groups in the parliament. After two-and-an-half years with the right-wing Pole Jerzy Buzek from the EPP group at the helm, it is time for a socialist.
At the outset of the interview, some of that growling rottweiler I had been warned about and seen in debates is sitting at the other side of the table, with his eyes fixed on an ancient brick of a mobile phone, hardly the intimidating instrument of a power-player.
There’s nothing slick about Schulz. We are greeted with a gruff ‘hello’ and find our seats around a polished conference table in his office. Schulz still has his eyes fixed on the screen of his phone. He does look up and seem rather pleased with the first question, though: How does a bookseller and one-time mayor of the small German town of Würselen in North Rhine-Westphalia end up in European politics?
“It’s easy. I come from the region around Aachen, where the borders of Germany, Netherlands and Belgium meet. We’re Europe’s most EU-friendly region. It was a natural step,” says Schulz.
He had delivered a more elaborate version of that answer in front of his political opponents in the EPP group earlier that day. It assured him of the group’s support, moving one member, Joseph Daul, the Alsace-born EPP leader, to tears. Schulz’s passionate and personal plea for Europe, his account of growing up in the border region and his insistence that we should never forget why the European Union was created in the first place struck all the right notes.
Schulz was made to promise by the right-wing EPP group that he’d see out his term. If he were to receive their support, he would have to fold away the red banners.
So Schulz has concentrated on waving the European flag as a federalist, which would earn him the support of the majority of the parliament, including most of the EPP group. It will not win him the support of the nationalists in parliament, but he doesn’t seem to think that he has to represent “those who want to destroy the European Union”.
These are the nationalists, who want to roll back power to the member states. Many of these MEPs actually see the election of Schulz as a great victory for their cause. They are convinced he will scare people off Europe.
In his office in Brussels, Schulz gives himself the luxury of a few seconds of pensive reflection before he answers a question. Is it the English (his very strong third language after German and French) or is he simply biting his tongue? I’m not sure.
His spokesman, Armin Machmer, wants to convince me that some of the lines may be misinterpreted because of Schulz’s rough English, but to me it seems like Schulz is trying to get used to the idea of being presidential and dignified.
As president, a post he has aimed for since he was elected to chair the political group in 2004, he is representing the parliament vis-à-vis the other institutions and globally. His job is also to lead debates in the parliament’s plenary sessions and to calm the often virulent discussions and outbursts among the politicians.
The new Lisbon treaty gave the parliament new powers, and the institution is legislating in all EU areas of common legislation and has influence over the whole budget. Its new political and legislative strength is being challenged by the member states. Schulz is worried about the urge to roll back European decision-making and powers to the member states. He sees it as his role to defend the parliament against backroom deals between the leaders of Germany and France. “The European Parliament can never be too powerful, because it is the only directly elected institution,” he says.
According to Schulz, there are still European civil servants in the European Commission and the Council secretariat, who take a very dim view of the parliament’s new-found powers. The commissioners, as trained politicians, respect the role of the parliament more. “What we need now is more Europe,” he repeats like a mantra.
He is known as a good orator, and yet he falls into the trap of talking as an apparatchik, about the institutions, rather than the citizens. During our interview he never once evokes the 500 million Europeans who are represented by the parliament.
This may have something to do with the fact that he never steps out of the institution. He has spent his 18 years in Brussels in the parliament, travelling or going back to see his family (wife and two grown-up children) in Würselen. He can’t give me an address of his favourite bookstore or literary venue in Brussels, because he “never leaves the parliament” when he is here.
His first real exposure on the European stage came in July 2003, when he and Silvio Berlusconi engaged in a very frank and rude exchange in the parliament plenary. The then Italian premier was representing his country at the start of Italy’s six-month EU presidency. Schulz called the Italian government “racist” for its tough response to illegal immigration and heckled the prime minister over corruption charges. Berlusconi counterattacked by offering Schulz a role as a ‘kapo’ in an Italian film on Nazi concentration camps. Schulz was at the time head of the German social democrats delegation in the parliament.
In 2004, he became chairman of the whole Socialist Group. I suggest that the group’s result in the last election in 2009 was catastrophic, but Schulz doesn’t agree: “We had 26 percent of the seats in the previous mandate and kept 25 percent in the last election.”
Why can’t the left make bigger gains from the economic crisis? Schulz explains that some social democratic governments played along with the Wild West capitalists and thus lost credibility. But today, he is very optimistic about the left’s future gains in Europe.
“The socialists have won in Denmark, in Austria and Slovakia. There is a real socialist in power in Belgium. Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo has always been hostile to the rule of the markets. The left may have lost in Greece, Spain and Portugal, but we can see them winning in France, and that will mean that Angela Merkel’s coalition will lose in Germany.”
Which book would this literary man suggest represents the Great European Novel? This question puzzles Schulz greatly. He finally comes up with two works by members of the German Mann family, brother and son of Thomas: “I would say Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan (The Patrioteer) and also Golo Mann’s biographical novel of Wallenstein (a 17th-century general). But I’m also a great admirer of the South American novelists like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargos Llosa.”
For those of you who, like me, haven’t read The Patrioteer, it recounts the story of a loyal subject of Kaiser Wilhelm II and is a criticism of the nationalism of the time.
It is Schulz, the book-teller and reader, not the politician, who shows us a gift he had received that day. He opens an old leather-bound volume of a French book - La vie de Saint Martin. He holds the book like all bibliophiles, flat in his left hand while carefully leafing through it with his right. Martin was the Roman soldier, who shared his cloak with a poor beggar, and was then recruited to become the bishop of Tours. Wishing to remain in pious simplicity in the monastery, he attempted to avoid his new appointment by hiding among some geese, but the birds were so noisy that the episcopal delegation found him out.
In northern Europe we eat goose in Saint Martin’s memory in November. Our Martin, though, never wished to hide from his appointment. He has always wanted to be bishop at the Dome of European Democracy.
Martin Schulz
Elected
January 12, 2012
Replaced
Jerzy Buzek
Votes received
387 out of 670
Political party
Socialists & Democrats
Photo by Sander De Wilde
