So, we’re about there. Tomorrow the new European Parliament formally begins its mandate, it’s first deed being to elect a new president. It has to be said that suspense is somewhat lacking, with the outcome of the election taken for granted almost universally. I woke up to reports on the BBC this morning about the next President of the Parliament, with the journalist only making a token effort to remind listeners that there was actually the small matter of an election to be gone through first. The other events of the week: elections of vice-presidents, quaestors, a couple of political group leaders and decisions about committee chairmanships, though not the stuff of early morning news broadcasts, are similarly substantially pre-cooked, and those in the know, well, know. Even the big political question, the will-they-won’t-they story about Parliament formally endorsing Barroso as president of the Commission, has fizzled, with the news emerging last week that he’s going to have to wait.

Frankly, I find all of this a bit of a shame. From a communications perspective it’s tragic.

It’s not that there isn’t real politics behind all this. The fight for positions and influence has been tough, the deals which result in the outcomes to be formalised this week come after tough negotiations and sometimes bitter fights. Heads of government across Europe even get involved. There are winners and losers. Some are in, others are out. For the well-informed observer, the process is a fascinating one. Yes, it’s even fun to watch.

Trouble is we can’t talk about it. At least not to our readers.

From the outside, it can be hard to tell what's really going on. (Photo EP)

In house, the rumour mill has been in gossip-fuelled overdrive. Unsurprisingly, the Parliament is full of people with a taste for political gossip, who love nothing better than to trade stories, even where they have no direct stake in the outcome, which, of course, in our little hothouse, they frequently do. Acquaintances in the political groups with titbits to offer about, say, what latest trade of a chairmanship against a vice-presidency is in the offing take on the aura of oracles, their delphic utterances propelling a new story into the heady swirl of speculation. For those thus inclined, the hard-core political geeks and anoraks, it is also possible to add some judicious number-crunching into the mix. One can for example immerse oneself in the arcane delights of the d’Hondt mathematical formula for the attribution of positions in a system of proportional representation (Parliament even has its own variation on this fiendish calculus: “d’Hondt continu“). Empirical Britishers, brought up on cricket stats and an unwritten constitution, may prefer to delve into murky precedents, long-standing gentlemen’s agreements and case law.

This is the messy end of democratic politics, at the same time highly technical and deeply human.

There’s no question that the whole thing is highly entertaining. This is the messy end of democratic politics, at the same time highly technical and deeply human. So it’s a pity we are unable to share the joy of politics with the outside world. I fully understand of course. It would be – from an institutional perspective – a highly risky enterprise to communicate on the ongoing shenanigans, to speculate on outcomes and to report the latest word on the street (word on Place Lux, in our case perhaps) to our avid readership.

Risky but fun. There is a serious point here. The fact that so much of the real politics takes place off camera produces the impression among uninformed outsiders (i.e. most people) that everything just carries on in the Parliament as if the elections never happened. Most of the cliffhangers, the battles, the political realignments and, above all, the personal stories linked with them remain invisible to the public, leaving the impression of a dull, technocratic parliament, where everything appears to be pre-cooked and most elections to positions of power seem to produce  North Korean style majorities endorsing the will of the men in grey suits. It’s not the reality, but it could stand as a metaphor for the EU as a whole: impermeable and technocratic seeming from the outside, fascinating if you can get under the surface. Perhaps, as many have remarked before, we need a European West Wing to tell people what this place is really like.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the week to come.  It’ll be interesting, but maybe not as interesting as it should be.