Saturday, May 4th was official Open-Door Day
for all the European Union buildings in Brussels. Just to give you some
background info (skip this part if you are totally uninterested in the European
Government), the EU is basically made up of 3 buildings-The Parliament (representing the people), the European Council (representing national governments) and the Commission (responsible for holding up Europe's main interests).
Treaties and laws are created by this
"institutional triangle.” The
European Parliament is the only part of the 3 buildings which is an “elected
body” and represents all citizens of the EU. Basically, the parliament participates
in the legislative process. The representative members are directly elected
every five years. The Council is the part that makes the main decisions. There is
a Council President and each member state takes a six month turn in the
position. In addition, the Council has the legislative power and decisions are
made with a majority vote from member state representatives. Finally, the
European Commission manages the EU with members that are appointed by the
Council for five year terms- usually one Commissioner from each member state.
Its main job is to uphold the common interest of the EU. In other words, their
job is to provide better regulation of the EU. This means making better laws
for consumers and businesses.
Well, I was lucky enough to get a peak around each one of
these buildings and see the giant rooms where they hold their international
meetings and votes. One of the coolest things I experienced was being able to
visit the little interpreter’s glass booths sitting up around the meeting room
in the Commission.
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| Inside one of the interpreter's booths |
A man was giving a lecture about trade in English, and I
stood in the German interpreter’s little cube room and watched as the women had
one ear covered by the headphone and listed to the man, very intently, and then
pressed a button in front of her and talked into a microphone, perfectly
translating every sentence he said into German, directly as he was speaking!
You never think about how difficult this job is until you actually watch
someone do it. I went into the French room and the Dutch one as well, and I was
so impressed every time. And they had rooms for almost every major language. I
just found it amazing how the people could listen and speak, not missing a
single sentence, even when the man giving the speech kept talking and they were
still translating the sentence before. I even got to overhear a French interpreter
talk to a women about her job. She explained how it is an extreme challenge for
your brain at first (as I would expect!). You need to know both languages
perfectly. She said that one way she practiced in school was by listening and
completely comprehending someone giving a speech while, at the same time,
counting backwards in her head! She also explained, which I found very interesting,
that a lot of the time the people giving the speeches or who answer a question do
not speak English as their first language, and they make a grammar mistake or
mispronounce a word, or ever worse, use a word in their native-tongue instead
of the English one! Sometimes this forces the interpreter to guess or simply
improvise!
Here are some more pictures from the Commission:
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| View of the Schumann area of Brussels from the top floor of the Commission. Schumann is where most of the EU buildings are located. |
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| The "Arc de Triomphe" of Bruxelles, located in a park just outside Schumann. It was built between 1880 and 1905 to illustrate the "glorious past of Brussels" and represent the "peace-loving nation of Belgium." |
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| One of the largest meeting-rooms in the Commission. Many important topics concerning all of the EU are discussed here! |
The most impressive building however, was surly the
Parliament. As I believe I told you in one of my recent posts, that building is
absolutely HUGE! It even has its
own hairdresser, dry-cleaner, bank and restaurant for the employees. It's
like a mini city in itself.
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| The Parliament, as seen from Place Lux |
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| Photo take from MIDDLE floor |
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| The many different EU Political Groups... They are a bit more spread out in their percentages than those of the US, I think. |
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| View from window of Parliament |
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| Cool statue in Parliament |
In addition to getting to visit rooms
and such, all the EU buildings were filled with booths from different
organizations affiliated with the EU, each with a different goal. There were
research booths, environmental booths, health booths, everything you could
possibly be interested in. One young man came up to me and told me about the EU
Marie Curie organization, which funds opportunities for students to do research
in countries all over the world. I think this is a fantastic idea, especially
since it helps students who would otherwise not afford to study abroad.
At the end of this long day of wandering
around all the giant EU buildings, I felt like sitting down and watching a
movie. That night was actually the last official night of the famous Brussels
Short-Film Festival which lasts for about 2 weeks each May. They screen
International and National Award-Winning short films of every kind of genre, in
different theaters all over Brussels. That night, at a little old theater in up-town Brussels called the Vandome, they were screening 4
different short-films from 4 different countries, all of which received awards
at recent prestigious film festivals from Berlin, Venice and Rotterdam. The
films were from Portugal, England, Greece and Switzerland! The cool thing was
each one was different from the next.
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| The theater where I saw the screening was very small, but really had character! The wooden stairs creaked as you went up to the concession stand, where the man was selling tall glasses of strong Belgian beer and little bags of kettle corn. |
The Portuguese film was
mostly silent and took place in Lisbon on the this festival day where all
lovers are supposed to give pots of basil to each other as a token of their
love. However, the people all were depressed and walked around the city very
slowly, like zombies, some of them almost getting run over by cars. One girl
even drowns herself. However, all of this is silent and kind of peaceful, in a
sense, so it wasn’t as gruesome as it sounds. It was a little depressing but
very well filmed.
The Swiss film was about a man from Nigeria living in Zurich,
who was forced to be deported back to his home country. However, he fights back
and starves himself while in jail and dies in the end. The whole thing is
narrated by this man as he is suffering. Also a quite depressing film, but very
informative since it is based on real happenings. Apparently any Africans are
inhumanly deported back to their home countries. Since they struggle and do not
cooperate, they are forced to sit in chairs where they cannot move and have to
wear helmets on their heads, and many of them die on the way back.
The Grecian
film was completely silent and simply showed a number of blank billboards
across Greece. This was supposed to send some kind of message to the audience,
but I didn’t really get it.
Finally, the British one was a dark comedy
featuring a two men arguing in a gas station in the middle of the night,
playing with each other’s trust and decision making.. I think this one was my
favorite.
Anyway, that was quite a full day and
very exciting for me, even if I spent it all on my own!
