Wiles over charismaAT FIRST glance the European Parliament might look invulnerable to the populist wave sweeping across Europe. Antonio Tajani, a centre-right Italian who won the presidency of the chamber on January 17th, is the sort of bland functionary the European Union specialises in. Little on Mr Tajani’s CV grabs the eye, bar an affection for Italy’s long-defunct monarchy and a spell as spokesman for Silvio Berlusconi, the bunga-bungatastic former prime minister. His victory was engineered in classic EU fashion, after four rounds of voting and endless dealmaking between the parliament’s sundry political groupings.
Yet Mr Tajani’s win can be traced to those same disruptive forces. At the last election, in 2014, nearly one-third of the parliament’s 751 seats went to anti-EU or anti-establishment outfits. That forced its two biggest groupings, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D), into a “pro-European” grand coalition. Under their deal Martin Schulz, a German Social Democrat, was to serve a two-and-a-half-year term as president before giving way to an EPP...Continue reading
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