We, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are generally happier making grand gestures than applying ourselves to issues that are actually within our gift. We spend days haggling over the precise wording of our Declaration on the Anniversary of the End of World War Two. We work ourselves into a lather of indignation about the use of the death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago. But on the question which most immediately affects our work — the duplication of all our facilities in Brussels and Strasburg — we seem paralysed.

There are regular attempts to end the travelling circus, whereby all 732 MEPs, our assistants and staff, the committee clerks and interpreters, the chefs and the chauffeurs, to say nothing of tons of official documents, make a monthly peregrination to the pretty Rhenish town. But every motion to end the Strasburg sittings has been voted down. French MEPs like the current system because it diverts money from European taxpayers to French hoteliers and restaurateurs. Germans like it because they get free rail travel within Germany, which allows them to be picked up by a parliamentary chauffeur at Offenburg and driven across the Rhine, and then to claim for a full first-class fare. Others go along with the status quo out of a sense of resignation, pointing out that, even if MEPs were to muster a majority against Strasburg, they would be overruled by the French Government, which has a veto on any change.

But there is a way to meet all these objections: we could, as I have argued before, cut out the Brussels sessions and meet permanently in the Alsace capital. Because the treaties specify that Strasburg is the European Parliament’s permanent seat, this change could be made without needing the consent of all 25 member countries. In other words, we MEPs could push it through more or less immediately. We could then sell the Brussels building and hand the proceeds back to our constituents in tax-cuts.

The reason this won’t happen, of course, is that Euro-federalists see Brussels as their capital city. They resent the old idea, embodied by the Strasburg chamber, that the EU is a club, whose institutions should be spread among its member nations. Indeed, many of them dream of the day when Belgium finally breaks into its constituent parts, allowing Brussels to be lifted out of the state system altogether and placed under direct EU jurisdiction, as a kind of Washington DC or Vatican City.

So, is there anything to be done? Well, at the very least, we can demonstrate the extent of public dissatisfaction with the existing system, which adds hundreds of millions of otiose euros to the EU budget. An online petition was organised earlier this year, and is well on its way towards its target of a million signatures. You can add your support at www.oneseat.eu

More on this topic:

Let Us Move Brussels to Strasburg, 26 April 2006