“You have to understand: you are the enemy.” Those were the words I heard uttered by a researcher in the European parliament to civil servants from the EU’s member states a couple of years ago. What – with aghast looks on their faces – did the researcher mean, the civil servants asked him? The answer was that the European parliament is united not by political will, but by its fights with the other EU institutions – the council and the commission – and this helps it overcome conflict internally. The enemy is always down the road, not in the parliament itself.”

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