In recent days, two things have happened in the European Parliament which perfectly depict the slide of the EU's institutions. The first was the ban on presidents Puigdemont and Torra holding an event in one of their rooms. The president of the European Parliament, the controversial Antonio Tajani, conservative, journalist and founder of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi's party, took sides with the veto, alleging something as clearly nonsense as "security reasons". Later, Puigdemont, with the whole of his government in exile, attended an event in the European Parliament without prior notice and, as normal, nothing happened. There was no reason to prevent Torra and Puigdemont's event. But Tajani, inflexible, and a friend of the different right-wing Spanish parties, took a political decision which was to their liking but not at all institutional.
This Wednesday, it was members of far-right Vox who were able to use a room in the European Parliament to insult Puigdemont and Torra, invited by the right-wing populist party that's in government in Poland, Law and Justice (PiS). In the case of Puigdemont, Vox's secretary general ended his speech with a "Long live Spain, long live Europe and Puigdemont to prison" and, in the case of Torra, he defined him as Puigdemont's puppet and the independence movement as "criminal". That's what Tajani has authorised: that a group without parliamentary representation until recently in any legislative chamber of any autonomous community, or Spain, or Europe, can occupy its rooms to insult those who have always been pro-European and defenders of the EU.
It's not strange that workers from the EU's institutions should have demonstrated their rejection of the event and that the Flemish MEP Mark Demesmaeker should have had to give up on finishing a question he'd asked the organisers on the commotion that happened in the room, whilst Vox's secretary general, Javier Ortega Smith, accused him of being paid by the Catalan independence movement. That event had Tajani's backing, and the presidents' event his ban. Europe, today, is that, in terms of the institutions. A club where parties like Vox find their way to growing and spreading their lies paved for them and the Catalan independence movement finds the institutions' doors closed. Whilst that was happening in Brussels, in Lleida, the local leader of Vox was arrested for alleged sexual crimes against minors. And Ortega Smith in the European Parliament left the audience with their mouths open saying that if they weren't wearing burqas it was thanks to the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (13th century), the naval battle of Lepanto (16th century) and the emperor Charles V (also 16th century).
I remember Martin Schultz presiding over the European Parliament: a learned, social democratic and qualified German. But it seems that the future belongs to Tajanis and Borrells, to politicians like them. Boisterous, forgetful and unaware of history and reality.