A member of the European Parliament takes the floor, delivering an impassioned speech. Then the camera zooms out, revealing an awkward reality: a nearly empty chamber, with only a few dozen lawmakers scattered across the benches. Many are glued to their phones, while hundreds of seats remain vacant.
For years, this has been a familiar sight in the European Parliament. During Strasbourg's long plenary weeks, many MEPs arrive just before their speaking slot, deliver a tightly rehearsed one-minute speech and leave almost immediately afterwards.
"It is the most expensive backdrop for social media clips in the world," an MEP told Euronews, on condition of anonymity. The real audience, the lawmaker argued, sits hundreds of kilometres away, watching speeches later on X, Instagram, TikTok or Facebook.
As the hemicycle has increasingly become a recording studio rather than a debating chamber, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has pushed for an ambitious overhaul of plenary business.
The aim is to make debates more dynamic and reduce the rows of empty seats. Metsola believes images of sparsely populated benches undermine the Parliament's claim to embody Europe's democratic centre, an EU official told Euronews.
