London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

EU play puts ‘diabolical’ food industry lobbyists center stage

EU play puts ‘diabolical’ food industry lobbyists center stage

Europe Connexion is a cautionary tale of a corporate career in the Brussels bubble.

Corporate lobbying is literally poisoning the EU, says a forceful play that has just finished a two-week run in Brussels.

Europe Connexion is a melodramatic diatribe against lobbyists by Alexandra Badea, a francophone Romanian playwright who paints the food and farming industry as a supreme force of evil whose greedy henchmen in Brussels will stop at nothing to bend EU legislation to their benefit.

But it needn't just be about food — the play portrays Brussels as a cesspit of power-mad lobbyists and consultancies splashing millions to influence EU lawmakers to the detriment of ordinary Europeans and the planet.

Dark and angry, the piece tells the story of a ruthless assistant to an MEP who turns lobbyist for the pesticide industry, all for the sake of salary and status. Before long he’s in too deep, hallucinating about swarms of bees that he’s killed and the people he’s destroyed on his way to the top. It all ends in a full-blown mental health tailspin-cum-ethical crisis that he cannot resolve.

The narrative of cynical corporate lobbying that will be familiar to many Brussels aficionados — it's one that is often pushed by left-leaning NGOs and green groups which see any form of advocacy by industries who could stand to lose out from reforms as inherently unfair. Yet the very existence of the European Green Deal is proof the corporates don’t always have the upper hand – until it's entirely gutted of change-making powers by their lobbying influence, that is.

The play, which ran until November 26 at the downtown Théâtre des Martyrs, is strongest when it dissects the supposedly nefarious strategies lobbyists employ: schmoozing contacts over lunch, mastering the euphemistic lingo of the bubble, creating fake supportive NGOs — known as astro-turfing — or destroying an eminent professor’s credibility.

It paints the lobbyist — played by two actors, one male called Pierange Buondelmonte and one female called Aline Mahaux — as a maestro of these dark arts. In absurdist interludes the actors run on the spot to suggest how robotic and inhuman lobbying is, and swap business cards with their mouths à la American Psycho.


Thinly drawn


Europe Connexion is certainly timely and even prescient — even if it was written in 2015. Lobbying is a perennial issue in Brussels, but it's very much in the spotlight right now as the food and farming industries push back against the EU’s environmental policy agenda. Big Food's argument, that Europe can't afford to underwrite a green revolution in wartime, echoes the food-security mantra that runs through the play.

The play ran until November 26 at the downtown Théâtre des Martyrs


But, even if you believe a shadowy cabal of lobbyists is pulling the strings in Brussels, as a work of theater, it’s a dud. There’s one tone throughout, and no real characters bar the thinly-drawn lobbyist. The play's exaggerated plot ultimately weakens both its dramatic plausibility and political force: A student takes his own life after he’s outed for plagiarism by the lobbyist, whose wife slits her own wrists when he threatens to quit to save his sanity.

In fact, rather than the corporate empire, the chief villain of the piece is the one-dimensional wife who bullies her husband to stay in his hated job to make her “proud.” This retrograde depiction of the hen-pecking, materialistic wife jars with the progressive intent of the rest of the play.

The storyline also shatters on contact with the reality of the EU. Suggesting that the European Parliament is the all-important EU institution where minor acts of corporate pressure are a matter of life and death for Europe is pushing it, to say the least. To the contrary, the Parliament tends to be a more ambitious institution when it comes to banning toxic substances or calling for sweeping environmental and climate reform than other powerful parts of the EU machinery, such as the member countries assembled in the Council of the EU.

Most frustratingly of all, this outcry of Manichean activism didn't bother to engage with the other side's arguments or explore the reasons why so many intelligent human beings — who certainly could be doing other things — pursue a career in lobbying. Haven't some of them drunk the Kool-Aid and genuinely believe they're providing a vital service? Knocking down the lobbyist's scaremongering food security narrative would have made the play's arguments even stronger.

As an act of advocacy for its own cause, the play left me cold. Perhaps, instead of going to the theater, I needed to be taken out for an expensive lunch ...

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×