The MEP who hated being an MEP wants you to vote in the EU election

BRUSSELS — Meet the MEP who loathed every minute he spent in the European Parliament — and is now on a mission to get you to vote.

When Nico Semsrott arrived in Brussels in 2019, dressed in the dark-rimmed glasses and black hoodie that became his daily uniform, he had a clear strategy in mind: Make people care about politics and hold Eurocrats accountable through the power of satire. 

“I wanted to use comedy as a tool to make things public and to trick people into politics,” the German lawmaker and satirist told POLITICO in an interview in his office. 

After a career in standup comedy, he was elected in 2019 as one of two lawmakers on the ticket of a satirical party called Die PARTEI (“The PARTY”), which collected a combined 900,000 votes that year. 

Unlike his PARTEI colleague Martin Sonneborn, Semsrott decided to join a parliamentary group — the Greens — to gain greater influence. (He quit the satirical party in 2021 after Sonneborn faced racism accusations.) 

Now, at the end of his first and only term, he can’t leave it all behind fast enough. 

“Isn’t it absurd to tell people: ‘These are the European elections, you’re going to change everything, you will decide.’ Nico Semsrott said. | EP

His time as an MEP, he reckons, has made him a “worse person” and “under no circumstances” will he return to the Parliament. In April, Semsrott published a book about how much he disliked being an MEP. Across 340 pages, he painted the Parliament as a powerless and navel-gazing institution rife with corruption that rewards obfuscation. 

The book, he readily admits, was written by a ghostwriter, and its message might be more negative than he intended. But his scathing criticism of Parliament’s inner workings still stands. MEPs are “able to make their own rules,” he insisted. 

Semsrott felt vindicated when the Qatargate corruption scandal thrust his concerns into the wider spotlight, but he argues that there are a lot more dodgy dealings going on. “I’m 100 percent sure that happens in 100 different scenarios at the moment. But if you don’t control anything, you can’t find anything. And the Parliament doesn’t control anything,” he said.

The institution’s lack of power extends beyond its own walls, he says. Semsrott, like many other lawmakers, complains that MEPs have few means of holding the European Commission or national governments accountable, and can’t even propose legislation. 

“Isn’t it absurd to tell people: ‘These are the European elections, you’re going to change everything, you will decide.’ And then if you look at the actual process … the real European elections happen in Germany and France and Italy, the national elections, and the rest does not matter that much,” he said. “That’s the reality.” 

So should Europeans even bother voting this week? 

“Of course,” Semsrott says, arguing that every vote for one party or candidate is effectively a vote against another one: “The least you can do is make it harder for what I call evil people to make their points.” 

Not your regular MEP

Some might argue that Semsrott didn’t even try to make an impact. When POLITICO crunched the numbers on thousands of amendments filed and speeches held this term, the German MEP stood out for having barely left a trace. 

Outside his office, a bright pink sign reads: “Office of Nico Semsrott. Monday — closed. Tuesday — closed. Wednesday — closed. Thursday — closed. Friday — closed. Saturday — closed. Sunday — closed.” 

He rarely missed a vote, but otherwise didn’t engage much in the traditional work of an MEP. In five years he sent two written questions to the European Commission, gave four speeches, and did not contribute to drafting or amending legislation at all.

In fairness, Semsrott says, he never intended to do that kind of work. 

“I wanted to create transparency. About things that are going wrong,” he writes in his book. “I told [the Greens] from the outset that I don’t want to contribute content-wise … I want to produce videos and raise awareness for European issues.” 

“I was thinking: I’m a comedian. I’ll just do what I did on stage on a different stage … I just didn’t have any idea what politics in reality means. I was really that naive”. | EP

He caused a stir in the early months of the term, staging a protest against Ursula von der Leyen by appearing in plenary covered in consultancy logos, a reference to criticisms that the Commission chief is too close to the likes of McKinsey and KPMG.

He kept a log of every source of income that was made available to him as a lawmaker to find out “exactly what I’m getting too much for.” He also poked fun at the opaque digital labyrinth where the Parliament stores lawmakers’ votes.  

But Semsrott acknowledges that his approach failed. 

“I was thinking: I’m a comedian. I’ll just do what I did on stage on a different stage … I just didn’t have any idea what politics in reality means. I was really that naive,” he said.

When the pandemic hit, his output rapidly declined. His frustration over the bureaucratic constraints on the job — he once landed in trouble with the Parliament’s administration for spending his PR budget on handing out free tampons — combined with a resurgence of depression, which Semsrott has grappled with since his youth. 

He felt “ashamed being depressed and not being able to do as much as I wanted to,” he said. “I really felt that pressure.” 

But he also didn’t think he could just walk away from the job. And “even in my most depressed episodes,” he forced himself to attend plenary votes. “I tried to at least do that.” 

Transparency for taxpayers 

At the same time, Semsrott acknowledges that he had a rather naive idea of politics before joining the Parliament. 

Semsrott dreams of political change on a large scale — billionaires shouldn’t exist, he argues at one point in the book — but the European Parliament measures success in incremental steps.

Legislative work, the bulk of MEPs’ duties, often means fighting over details in the EU’s expanding rulebook, such as whether to increase a percentage here or add a review clause there.

Semsrott admits that these negotiations bored him: “Personally, I don’t care whether you get 0.1 percent more or less. I’m interested in the big picture,” he writes in the book. 

And although he thinks the Parliament has done many good things, his book contains scathing passages about the assembly that wouldn’t be out of place in a Euroskeptic manifesto, at one point declaring it “pointless.” 

“The European elections are important simply because you have a say in deciding to whom you want to give the privileges I have listed,” Nico Semsrott writes toward the end of his book. | Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images

Still, he insists, it’s friendly fire. 

“I think you should absolutely criticize things you don’t like in order to have a discussion to make it better,” he said. “I know everybody in here is afraid of right-wing extremists, but that should not make us stop having discussions.” 

Throughout the book, Semsrott takes the Parliament to task on what he sees as a “lack of democratic control of the powerful,” particularly when it comes to finances.  

In one chapter, he breaks down just how much taxpayers’ money MEPs can — in theory — pocket during one five-year term: €900,000, according to his calculations. 

That includes a monthly salary of about €5,400 net, a tax-free allowance of €350 for every day a lawmaker is registered on Parliament’s attendance list, and a monthly allowance of €5,000 for general expenditures, such as office supplies. 

Lawmakers can also make use of a PR budget of about €40,000 per year and submit an estimated €330,000 in staffing costs annually, according to his calculations. On top of that, MEPs enjoy vast privileges, from diplomatic passports to chauffeurs. 

This, Semsrott argues, is a core reason why Europeans should vote this week. 

“The European elections are important simply because you have a say in deciding to whom you want to give the privileges I have listed,” he writes toward the end of his book. 

Plus, he added, wasting your vote means the parties you dislike face one opponent less. 

“That’s stupid,” Semsrott concludes. “Are my negative examples on the previous pages enough to make it clear that — although lots of things suck — we should take advantage of all opportunities, however limited they may be, so as not to give up completely?”