Sunday, May. 30, 2004

Four Candidates, Four Visions

Robert Kilroy-Silk
U.K. Independence Party candidate Kilroy-Silk, 62, has one goal: "To get Britain out of Brussels." Axed from a BBC talk show in January after calling Arabs "limb amputators" and "women repressors," the erstwhile Labour M.P. has nothing good to say about the E.U. either. "It's bad, corrupt, bureaucratic," and he's outraged that Britain put 12.9 billion more into the E.U.'s 2002 budget than it got back. The E.U., he says, "is going to implode. We should have a civilized, amicable divorce while it's still possible."

Carmen Kass
"I'm not a politician," says Vogue cover girl Kass, 25, a candidate of Estonia's ruling center-right Res Publica party. In 11 years of modeling, "I've seen beauty and I've seen beasts" — surely good prep for politics. Her approach is earnest, even solemn; she credits that to an early childhood spent under Soviet rule. Now she's savoring the freedom to participate. "It's so important for youth to be involved, to create our own future," Kass says. "More love and attention is needed — and less fear of putting yourself forward and getting involved."

Paul Van Buitenen
When Van Buitenen started working as a European Commission auditor in 1990, "I had a lot of idealism," he says. Not all of it is gone. The Dutch whistle-blower, whose revelations of corruption led to the resignations of all 20 E.U. commissioners in 1999, wants a trip back to Brussels as an M.E.P. "Europe belongs to its citizens, not to a small network of élites that uses the system to get its way," says Van Buitenen, 47, who has started a reform-focused party called Transparent Europe. The wave of change he sparked "was just superficial," he says. A seat in the European Parliament "will allow me to ask questions, to see if the Commission is serious about reform."

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen
The new Europe has long been on Rasmussen's agenda. Danish PM from 1993 to 2001, he won a yes vote on the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, changing Danes' minds after they'd said no in an earlier referendum. "The new Europe is one of integration," he said on May Day. Rasmussen, 60, wants to put this vision into practice as an M.E.P. Elected president of the Party of European Socialists in April, he's being talked about as a possible President of the next Parliament. Jobs are his top priority. In a recent entry on his weblog, he promised to work for a "People's Europe, where we combine competitiveness, jobs and social security."