An Election Focuses the Collective EU Mind

But with No Leader To Choose, Only A Bit. That's Good.

ATM promoting elections for the Parliament of the European Union

Driving around the roundabouts here in town, one can’t help but notice the banners from different political parties and coalitions asking voters to go their way on June 9th, when voters elect representatives to the Parliament of the European Union.

As elections go, these are both incredibly important and incredibly boring. Which is maybe why notices about the election even greet me at the ATM machine. The government is trying to drum up interest.

The EU sets the floor, walls and ceiling for much of the daily life of EU members, including of course in Portugal, down to the coins in pockets. It is so essential that, like the air we breathe, it’s easy to forget about it. It makes policies and spends on trade, health, immigration, infrastructure and more. Most of the important stuff, basically. It’s the reason you can travel freely across borders and even more importantly, it’s the reason Portugal is no longer fearing Spain might attack it.

Yet unlike in the United States, the EU has no president that all citizens elect, a president who will set the direction of the union and symbolically and actually lead it.

The EU does have the Parliament of the European Union, which EU citizens directly elect. It’s headquartered in Strasbourg and Brussels, both cities with checkered histories in terms of identity. The Parliament has 720 representatives from 27 countries that make up the European Union. The big five - Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland elect 367 of these, with Germany alone electing 96. Portugal hangs out with the smaller countries including Greece and Czechia in electing a mere 21 delegates.

Is it a bug or a feature or both that the European Union has no president to focus synergies. And is it a bug or feature of the United States that has a president? (And isn’t that a useful phrase, “bug or feature?”)

Even before the election of Donald Trump scared the bejesus out of me, I was critical of our American presidential system. That essentially anyone can run for president, and quite possibly be elected, is a top-heavy system and way too unpredictable.

In the last few decades, this system has given us Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, political newcomers who few would have predicted winning the highest office in the land, with fingers on the nuclear buttons. Going way back, it gave us Abraham Lincoln, a one-term congressman from Illinois. Our system has been designed in such a way that voters can collectively fling into this top seat anyone that catches their fancies, and they do.

This can be a good thing when it goes your way, but is it really a prudent way to choose the leader of our large and important country? No, it’s not. In truth, I favor a more parliamentary system, where a legislature chooses a president or prime minister, and voters elect the legislators. I favor this because voters must filter their preferences for a leader through a mechanism of a party and legislature. Although once elected, the leader has in some ways more power because the legislature is clearly on his side.

So I look with a certain longing the way that European Union does things. This parallel isn’t exact, because the European Parliament is not a parliamentary system, not really. But I will leave that for another day.

Absent a president or prime minister to gather the energies, the main political parties here in Portugal have sponsored candidates for the parliament, and then promoted the parties and their way of viewing the European Union. The polls predict the Partido Socialista, or PS, will win the most delegates, followed by the Aliança Democrática, or AD, the center-right party that is currently governing Portugal. And lastly, Chega, the far-right, populist, anti-immigrant party, is expected to gain its first seats in the EU parliament.

So it goes.

Not so exciting, but on the other hand, it leaves little room for a newcomer to capture the public’s imagination, or a big chunk of them, and swing the entire European Union in a new direction. Good.

Sure, it leaves the union in the hands of the bureaucrats, who are only loosely responsible to all those delegates in the European parliament. And to the European Council and European Commission, the other governing institutions. But it also avoids what happens in the United States.

I can understand why some Europeans might long for what the USA has. In truth, there is no absolutely superior system. There are only strengths and weaknesses, that poke out according to circumstances.

Tummy Time: Eating Sardines in the Algarve

In the United States is has become a truism among gourmets - no I will not use that demeaning term “foodies” - that the best restaurants are often found in small nondescript strip shopping centers.

Maybe the same thing as sometimes true here in Portugal because I recently had a great meal in a little restaurant in the suburban hell of the Algarve.

As readers now, I am down on the Algarve, the southernmost part of Portugal, viewing it as too much like Florida or Southern California. For my tastes, there are too many shopping malls, condos, golf courses and other unpleasantries. Although to those who prefer it, enjoy!

I had to come down to the Algarve, to its capital city of Faro, to complete a task. An absurd task, that I will perhaps tell you about another time. After I had completed my absurd task, it was almost lunchtime. So I asked the clerk at the propane store if she could recommend a restaurant. Do you want fish, she asked? Yes, I said. And she recommended two.

The second one she recommended out turned out to be just a few minutes away from a big big box sports store I was visiting. Yes, I enjoy the Algarve’s larger shopping selection, when I am there.

This restaurant she recommend, Gruta das Figuras, was on a suburban highway near a traffic circle. Hardly a glamourous location. Even after I saw it, it was very challenging to get to. I ended up parking on a side street and walking the equivalent of a few blocks. (Suburbia doesn’t really have blocks.) Another truism is that the harder a restaurant is to get to the better it is.

The building itself the restaurant occupied was old, probably leftover from when this was farmland. It look semi-abandoned. Gruta occupied one section of it.

I walked in the back door and it was full of people eating fish, including sardines. Portugal really fetishize sardines and sing their praises. But I had not actually really liked grilled sardines when I’ve had them before. But, this looked like a good place to give them another try.

The guide for my conversion experience was the waiter, who showed me how to eat them. And he only did this because I asked. Important. Ask. He told me the best way was to do it was “a mau”, by hand. You put the sardine on a slice of nice Alentejo bread, which is supplied; lift off the skin with your fingers; then pick up the piece of bread with the sardine on it and with your lips just suck off the flesh off the top of the bone. Next, flip the fish over and repeat. You don’t eat the skin, which doesn’t taste that great and may account for my bad previous experiences. Then you eat the bread, which is now soaked with fish juices, olive oil and salt, and is wonderful. I did this 10 times with 10 sardines. I was happy.

So now I love grilled sardines, and look forward to eating them many, many time in the future. Maybe even in casa.