The Brussels Report Podcast Episode 11 - a closer look at the European Parliament, with Brussels-based consultant Pelle Christy Geertsen
The Brussels Report Podcast
BrusselsReport.eu
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🗓️ 7 October 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
In this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe interviews Pelle Christy Geertsen, a Brussels-based consultant and a true "Brussels bubble" insider. He is the Managing Director of Brussels strategy consultancy Euraffex, where he's active since 2014, and has lots of experience in EU politics, starting from 1997 in his native Denmark. He has been working at the European Parliament between 2005 and 2014, assisting MEPs in both Brussels and Copenhagen.
In particular, the following topics are being explored:
- The struggle to succeed of European Parliament President David Sassoli, amid the "mid-term" replacement of various top positions in the European Parliament and its committees.
- The possibility of a new powerful eurosceptic alliance, or "supergroup", gathering political parties from both the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the Identity and Democracy (ID), and the relevance of it
- The European Parliament's hypocrisy when it comes to promoting "diversity"
- How important is the European Parliament as a "intermediate stage" for national politics nowaways?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Brussels Report podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | Welcome to a new episode of the Brussels Report podcast. |
| 0:19.0 | My name is Peter Clapper. I'm the editor-in-chief of Brussels Report podcast. My name is Peter Klepper. |
| 0:21.2 | I'm the editor-in-chief of BrusselsReport.EU. |
| 0:26.3 | And I'm very happy that we have today here, |
| 0:30.9 | Pelle Christi Geertsen, who's a Danish national. |
| 0:34.9 | He's a real Brussels bubble insider. He has been working in the European Parliament |
| 0:40.2 | between 2005 and 2014, but is really already active in EU politics since 1997 in Denmark. And now |
| 0:53.1 | since 2014, he's the managing director of the Brussels Strategy Consultancy |
| 1:00.2 | Eurofix so very welcome Pella thank you today we are going to discuss the |
| 1:09.8 | European Parliament. |
| 1:11.6 | Myself, I'm not a big fan of the EP, even if I think the original idea is actually quite good. |
| 1:20.6 | It's to have a democratically elected body that is supposed to scrutinize EU decision-making. |
| 1:30.3 | Now, in my humble view, the EP is not actually a check on the EU machine. |
| 1:36.3 | It's more like an extra motor because every time it wants to encourage the EU and the |
| 1:42.8 | Commission to spend even more or to regulate even more fervently. |
| 1:48.7 | So while the EP has also, I think, not been a great check on a lot of the waste and financial mismanagement that is visible for years and years when it comes to |
| 2:03.3 | EU spending. Not to speak of course of the EU's own or the European Parliament's own problematic |
| 2:13.0 | spending. It's extra pension fund it has in Luxembourg. It's the more than 4,000 euro MEPs |
| 2:23.5 | receive on their personal bank account that they don't have to specify what they spent it on. |
| 2:28.8 | Many of them, of course, interpret that as an extra salary. And I can go on and on and on about that institution but nevertheless |
| 2:37.2 | it's actually a very interesting institution and some important developments are happening |
... |
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