Poland in the EU

While "old Europe" is sending has-beens and never-quite-made-its to the European Parliament, "new Europe" politicians are dying for a seat in Strasbourg.

Listening to the (almost non-existant) European debate in France, Belgium and around makes me sick. Instead of telling people what the European Parliament does, journalists and commentators moan on and on about how uninterested and uninformed voters are.

So here is something which might bring a bit of splash into the picture. Believe it or not, politicians in new EU countries, especially the smaller ones, are killing themselves over seats in the EP. So much so, that one Lithuanian news portal is worried who will stay to run the country when all the political leaders leave.

"What would happen to the parties if their bosses all left for the EU Parliament? It will hardly be possible for them to direct Lithuanian politics from afar, as Lenin once did from Razliv. That would create chaos here", says Balsas (I am indebted for the translation to Eurotopics, and to my colleague Charlemagne for pointing in out on his blog).

Lithuania is not the only country where top political figures are running for the EP. In Hungary the former foreign minister Kinga Goncz is a candidate. She actually left the government to run. Imagine David Milliband or Bernard Kouchner doing that :-)

Also running in Lajos Bokros, former finance minister in the mid 90s and author of a famous austerity package which cut Hungarian spending and let the country jump in growth.

In Poland the crowd of candidates is diverse, but there is a number of rather large fish who are running again: Jerzy Buzek, the former prime minister, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, former Europe minister and deputy head of the governing Civic Platform, Dariusz Rosati, former foreign minister and rumoured to be a potential presidential candidate of the left.

So at least the politicians, if not the electorate, are enthousiastic about the election. A good question is of course why they want to go: because it's an interesting and influential job, or because even they themselves are sick of their national politics?