"The days are particularly long in Brussels ..."

Martine Kemp, together with Isabel Wiseler, is one of the two MEPs representing the CSV in the European Parliament. Not only does she commute between Luxembourg, Brussels and Strasbourg, but as the mother of a daughter who is just three months old, she also has to juggle political dossiers with her new family life. The interview takes place in the office of her sister Françoise, who is Co-Secretary General of the CSV and represents her party in the Chamber of Deputies.

Lëtzebuerger Journal: In the meantime, just over a year after the European elections, do you have an explanation as to why the CSV was unable to regain the third seat it lost to the DP in 2019, which your party held continuously between 2004 and 2019? When we last spoke to you, you were still optimistic about returning to the old days.

Martine Kemp: If you're not optimistic, you don't go into elections. This time, however, the LSAP had a strong list that won a lot of votes, and then the adr also won a European mandate for the first time.

Perhaps the CSV list was simply too weak. Alongside you and the two co-leading candidates Isabel Wiseler and Christophe Hansen, half of the CSV European list consisted of virtually unknown candidates.

It is important that we have strong Europeans on our list. People who know why they are doing European politics. It was an honest list. I don't think we made a mistake here.

Strong Europeans … but that's a generalisation …

I see it differently. I know from candidates on other lists that they would not have accepted their mandate if they had been elected. It was definitely different for our list. Everyone here would have stood up for Europe and a better European Union.