‘People ask me to use another door’: MEPs on bias, whiteness and rise of far right

Alice Kuhnke, a Swedish MEP, says she and other Black colleagues were stopped and asked for ID but their white counterparts were not. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

As a newly minted member of the European parliament in 2019, Alice Kuhnke swiftly learned to keep her ID badge handy. Sometimes the request to see it would come just moments after she had swiped it to enter a building, other times she would be stopped hours later as she made her way to meetings.

Six months into the job, she mentioned the stringent security measures over coffee with a few colleagues. “They said ‘Are you serious? I’ve never been stopped.’”