Galaxy Europe › Portraits

By Bibbi Abruzzini



Slovenian film-maker Miha Mohorič is one of the 719,547 tourists who visited Nepal last year. He decided to document the daily life of street children in overpopulated Kathmandu. The population of Nepal is 29 million, over 30,000 are street children.

by Aurélie Pirkenne, translated by Eirini Michailidou

Ex General Director of the Philarmonic Orchestra of Wroclaw and experienced pianist, Lidia Joanna Geringer de Oedenberg is not, as her extended name could let you think, a colourless royalty of the old Europe. On the contrary; with a friendly smile on her face, this 50-year-old Polish lady is a MEP for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats and loves her job as much as music. Here comes her portrait.

by Aurélie Feller, translated by Catherine Castledine

Spanish, Italians, Estonians, Danish, Germans…every day, between 4000 and 6000 busy people have lunch at the European Parliament. And they all want to eat something they like. Paul Peigné, chief executive of the Parliament’s enormous kitchens, works hard to bring the tastes of all 27 nationalities to the table.

By Edgar Makanga, translated by Joan Manuel Lanfranco Pari

A member of the French political party Europe Écologie, José Bové has sat in the European Parliament since June 2009 as a member of the Greens/European Free Alliance party. A veteran of civil disobedience and political struggle, the former leader of France’s Farmers Confederation is nevertheless a convinced European. Read this portrait of the 57-year-old.

by Boris De Vaere, translated by Madalina Matei

Surrounded by his female colleagues, Marc Tarabella is, indeed, one of the lucky European Parliament’s elected ones. The Belgian MEP joined, in 2009, the “Commission for Women” which nowadays has only four men. For his second mandate he particularly wished to increase the male proportion in this Commission, which had but two men during the previous legislature. A choice that he, of course, does not regret.