The First Port of Call

MEPs (can) weave a dense web from where they regularly acquire knowledge, including internal and external, national and transnational, and political and administrative sources.

However, the survey revealed that assistants’ most frequent source of information for the MEP office is ‘other assistants’ and that the people and organisations they work with most often include the group secretariat (27% of respondents), followed by NPD assistants, group policy advisors, and committee secretariats (each 21%) and NPD colleagues also ranked highly (15%). This pattern was observed during fieldwork. The actors which MEPs and their offices most frequently interact with on a daily basis and routinely request and acquire knowledge from, are their NPD and group colleagues.

When I began the fieldwork internship, the assistant said that if I ever had any questions then to pick up the phone and call the other NPD offices for advice and if they didn’t have the answer then to try someone else in the group. The NPD in particular acts as the first port of call. Both of the assistants regularly phoned other NPD offices for updates and advice and some of the calls to our office each day would be from them. Nearly as many emails were received from the NPD each day as from the entire group (Appendix-10). An assistant said that, particularly constituents, expect MEPs to be specialists in everything and they get called on all sorts of topics, including banning tomato extract. You can’t know about everything or you would ‘just drown’ and therefore she calls other offices in the group who do specialise in the query topic (Intervew-3).

In June, the MEP gave me a task which involved contacting other NPDs in the group to write a briefing. He added this would also be useful as an opportunity to get to know other offices in the group which was important. Once an office starts following committees and particularly when the MEP is involved in a report, they then work with other MEPs and their offices as well as relevant group and committee staff. Relationships are therefore built outwards in ripples from each office epicentre, with NPD and group colleagues and staff occupying the closest circles, acting as the first port of call.

MEPs (and assistants) in the NPD exchange knowledge formally routinely and informally regularly. The NPD meets formally multiple times during group weeks (Chapters 7), during committee weeks for breakfast, and on Mondays in plenary weeks. They update each other

on progress in their committees, particularly on reports to be discussed that plenary. The NPD assistants also meet formally every Friday (Chapter 6). Outside of these formal spaces, NPD colleagues’ regular informal interaction is facilitated by the spatial arrangement of MEP offices in Espace Léopold. Each floor or sets of floors tend to house particular groups and NPDs occupy offices grouped together within these floors. Doors tend to be left open and greetings called and people regularly pop into each others’ offices for discussions as well as meeting in the corridors and copy rooms and at the pigeon holes dotted around (also Belkacem:2013). The MEP’s office was located on the floor above, separated from his NPD colleagues. This interaction occurred on the floor below among these colleagues. On our floor, the three other NPDs regularly interacted among themselves, but less often with each other or us and (extra) effort had to be made to go down and see our fellow NPD assistants.

Members of the NPD and group act as the first port of call when offices require further knowledge, particularly about areas the MEP does not follow routinely. These CoPs help MEPs to cope with the work environment they face. MEPs focus on particular issues to achieve success and do not have the resources to follow every EP committee and initiative, and they therefore rely on trusted NPD and group colleagues. This coping strategy is explored further in Chapters 6-7 where the role of these structures is explored further.

5.6 Conclusion

This chapter has explored mundane activities and routines occurring backstage in the MEP office, a site of activity found through fieldwork to be central to individual MEPs’ daily endeavour here. I have argued that MEPs employ particular everyday strategies to cope with the particular work environment they face, to pursue their aims more successfully. By exploring banal backstage activities and routines, we gain a deeper understanding of MEP behaviour as a social practice and see MEPs as active agents rather than bearers of structures. This reveals the ways in which the office team organises and prepares their show - MEPs’ performances - to enable MEPs to give credible performances and persuade others to play the game successfully. Ethnography enabled me to explore what MEPs’ time in Brussels consists of and how they experience the EP as an institution and workplace and practice politics within it. Seeing that most MEPs (only) spend three days a week in Brussels/Strasbourg, return to their constituencies weekly, and the ways in which they

spend their time focused on issues, perhaps we should not be surprised that empirical investigations have not found the form of Europeanization anticipated in MEPs’ voting behaviour (see Scully:2005).

The following findings have been presented. Firstly, this workplace is characterised by constant movement, shortage of time, information overload, highly technical information, and bureaucracy, meaning organisational and expert knowledge are required to play the game. MEPs’ time and activities are organised strategically from the office to create order in this chaos. Their frontstage performances are scheduled and prepared so that they can give credible performances within the habitus.

Secondly, MEPs consciously and unconsciously develop particular strategies to cope with this work environment, including specialisation, re-contextualisation, and knowledge management. Many MEPs focus on and specialise in a narrow range of technical issues which usually relate to their committee(s). Specialisation is achieved by focusing their time and efforts on a few issues by attending and organising relevant meetings to acquire knowledge to pursue their agenda. MEPs re-contextualise these interests as they move between different CoPs, changing masks according to the audience to give credible performances in the pursuit of their interests. In this way, MEPs perform multiple roles often on a daily basis and negotiate the dual function. However specialist interests also facilitate reconciliation of roles and give meaning, purpose, and coherence to individual MEPs’ constant movement and activities. Alternative strategies to policy specialisation within committees, particularly the acquisition of group leadership positions, are explored in Chapter 8. MEPs also accumulate knowledge by employing trusted assistants, weaving a network from which to acquire knowledge, and routinely exchanging knowledge with trusted NPD and group colleagues who act as their first port of call in their non-specialist areas. The roles the assistants, NPD, and group play in MEPs’ everyday practice of politics are explored further in the next two chapters.

Chapter 6: