EUROCIRCLE

Finally! First of all, 40% of the deputies of the European Parliament are women, a number constantly growing since the first election of deputies by universal suffrage in 1979; at that time only 15% of women were elected. Atypical young men too represent the citizens in the assembly. Visiting the Parliament, few weeks ago, imagine my surprise at seeing in the hemicycle a man with a yellow hat on backwards on his head. I asked myself first if a high school student was interfering with politicians, before realizing that he was a European deputy. To find out who he was, I got the small paper, distributed at the entry, on which it’s possible to find the name of every deputy from their seat number in the assembly. So I calculated the rows and found out that he was Magid Magid, British deputy of the Greens Group. By the way, I also noticed that Silvio Berlusconi was, not surprisingly, absent. Mr Berlusconi is one of those men, white, dressed up and…octogenarian. It should be noted moreover that he was one of the few absent in this plenary session, but let’s go back to our deputy from across the Channel, about whom I wanted to know better.

Magid Magid is famous for his look, which is atypical for a politician, baseball hat and dr martens. Former Lord-Mayor of Sheffield, he has been elected last May for the first time in the European Parliament. His family fled war in Somalia to settle down in the United Kingdom, where he was naturalized at the age of 5. This 30-year-old young deputy is a devoted anti-brexit militant, and for him even if the EU is not perfect (and who would contradict him), it’s the more pertinent scale to face together problems that don’t have boundaries, like pollution or inequalities. He fights also against all forms of populism and defends the richness brought by migration, notably with his t-shirts bearing the slogan “Migrants make Britain great!” He encouraged young people to do more by participating to democratic life and supports the voting age at 16. His mandate risks however to be of short duration. In fact, if the UK would quit the EU on the 31st of January Magid Magid, like all the other British deputies elected in the European Parliament, will lose his seat and leave his place to other deputies elected last May on the “waiting list”. After brexit, different countries will gain additional seats: for example, France will have 5 additional seats and Denmark 1. In an upcoming post we will talk you about another atypical deputy, a colleague of Magid Magid in the Greens Group, Kira Marie Peter-Hansenn, th youngest European deputy: a 21 years old Danish woman!

Ps. The author of these lines, of course, has nothing against white, dressed up, over 50 men! However she is pleased to see, little by little, deputies of different kind and representative of the whole society.