Strasbourg seat row to drag on after 2009

STRASBOURG - MEPs ended their first week in the freshly-repaired Strasbourg building with renewed calls to put an end to the "traveling circus." Yet the Parliament's seat in the French city cannot be scrapped unless the EU Treaty is re-opened, with French deputies opposing the move until the end of 2009 at the earliest.

It smells like fresh paint in the huge egg-formed plenary hall known as the Hemicycle. The suspended ceiling looks brand new, nobody would know it collapsed only two months ago.

Journalists received special pamphlets from the city of Strasbourg welcoming the activities of the European Parliament getting "back to normal." Attached are declarations of several MEPs who favour the Strasbourg seat, while the Mayor of Strasbourg, Roland Ries, claims that the collapse "stirred a controversy unrelated to this technical incident."

But several MEPs seized the opportunity to renew calls for putting an end to monthly perambulation from Brussels.

British conservative MEP Philip Bradbourn said at the opening of the plenary session that "the events of August and September have proved that there is no need to travel here and that the parliament building in Brussels is more than capable of coping with our official sittings."

"I find it rather nonsensical that parliament has so long been incapable of addressing this issue and putting pressure on the Council to put an end to this flying circus," Mr Bradbourn told the plenary on Monday (20 October).

German Liberal MEP Alexander Count Lambsdorff ended his intervention on Tuesday (21 October) during the EU-Russia debate with the sentence "I would be happy if we could have this debate in Brussels rather than Strasbourg."

He explained to EUobserver that he always ends his statements with this line, whenever he is in Strasbourg, "to keep the issue alive."

Both the current EU Treaty and the prospective Lisbon treaty specifically say that the European Parliament has to meet 12 times a year in Strasbourg, a provision that wasn't very well thought through - in Count Lambsdorff's opinion - since there are no sessions in August and the parliament needs therefore to meet twice in Strasbourg in the month of September.

But to the chairman of the conservative group in the parliament, Joseph Daul, himself a native of Strasbourg, the calls to scrap the French seat are only "populist campaigning" in the run-up to the 2009 European elections.

"These MEPs need to have the courage to ask their government and heads of state to open the Treaty and put the question on the table. Then I will respect them," he told EUobserver.

"I sincerely think there won't be any discussion before 2009. I am in favour of opening the Treaty after 2009 and seeing if we maintain the locations for all the institutions - Central European Bank in Frankfurt, Court of Justice in Luxembourg, all the agencies spread out throughout Europe - we will discuss all that," he said.

He agreed that there should be a better use of the Strasbourg building for the 26 days a month it is not used, however.

"We will make proposals for using the building when not in session by the end of the year. We already have European schools coming to Strasbourg, there is also the human rights dimensions. It's certain we can use this building better," Mr Daul said.

Symbol of Euro-scepticism

Some of the EU commissioners, who are also bound to travel to Strasbourg when the parliament meets there are also annoyed by the status quo.

Asked if she thinks the collapse of the hemicycle was a good opportunity to call for the seat to be scrapped, communication commissioner Margot Wallstrom told EUobserver that "hopefully one day the [parliament] can decide itself on where it wants to be located and choose one place."

"I'm afraid that for the French, what was a very positive symbol for the unification of Europe can turn into a negative symbol of waste of money," she said. "There are so many fantastic ideas for what could be here instead. To travel is not the most practical thing we have been engaging in. It costs a lot."

To Count Lambsdorff, Strasbourg has become a "symbol for Euro-scepticism" and the French government should understand that it only fuels anti-EU feelings when it insists of this "ridiculous" arrangement to be kept.

"If France really cared about Europe, it would do away with Strasbourg as a symbol of Euro-scepticism. It would find a pragmatic way to find a compensation for Strasbourg and make the European Parliament a respected institution, with a seat in the European capital, which is Brussels."

Buckets in the Brussels building

Earlier this week, Mr Daul called upon the European Parliament's Secretary General to conduct similar technical inspections in the Brussels building, publishing photos of buckets on the floor in Brussels to catch drops from leaky roofs

"I just asked for the same inspections to be made in the Brussels building as they were done in Strasbourg. Last week I discovered that there were buckets on the floor, because when it rains, there are leaks. It's a problem with the passageway between the buildings," he said.

The European Parliament secretary general's spokeswoman, Marjory van den Broeke, said that there was a regular technical inspection following the leaks, which are usual with glass structures, and that similar inspections as in Strasbourg have indeed been carried out in Brussels, "particularly on the suspension systems" of the passageways.