Thursday

28th Mar 2024

Opinion

France should let the parliament go

You might think, mightn't you, that the once immensely valuable idea of Franco-German reconciliation would have been superseded by now for all but ceremonial purposes in favour of some more general and presently relevant conception that looked forward rather than back; a European Institute of Technology, for instance. You might so think but you would be wrong, in French eyes at least.

True, France was invaded three times in less than 100 years, but the last of these invasions took place 66 years ago now.

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  • Leaving Strasbourg - a small step for the Parliament; a giant leap for European democracy (Photo: EUobserver)

I know that thanks to the Hollywood reminders this still seems like yesterday, but 66 years is actually rather a long time. Recede 66 years from 1940 and you are (almost) back to the Franco-Prussian War, while only 66 years before that Napoleon was busy hammering the Prussians in and out of snowstorms.

Except in the minds of the very old, even the most recent of these sad events now belong in the portmanteau of history.

We do not need the European Parliament, for instance, sitting in Strasbourg, to remind us that France and Germany are now reconciled, any more than we need the Channel Tunnel to inform us that the far longer enmity between France and Great Britain no longer exists - or at least not officially.

But nevertheless the Parliament still sits in Alsace every month, at great expense and travail, to all concerned.

To be where the action is

Even in the early days Strasbourg was never a very satisfactory location, except as a symbol, but as the Parliament was then little more than democratic garnish on the European pie, this mattered little.

But the first rule of politics is 'to be there,' where the action is.

The absent do not determine the debate. Accordingly, as the Parliament became directly elected and acquired more powers it properly decided that it needed to base itself in Brussels, the levers of influence within easy reach.

Or almost, for the price of a new Parliamentary home in Brussels was a commitment, written into the 1998 Treaty of Amsterdam, to continue to hold plenary sessions in Strasbourg.

Ostensibly this commitment celebrates Franco-German reconciliation: in practice it panders to French vanity and an arm-twisting legion of Strasbourg hoteliers. There is also a price, reckoned at some 200 million euros annually.

This is the cost of packing the Parliament's papers, computers and general impedimenta into a vast baggage train, which then shuttles from Brussels to Strasbourg and back again.

It is also the cost of accommodating all the MEPs and Parliamentary staff and, more generally, of subsidising Alsatian cuisine.

The financial cost takes no account of the disruption to business or the loss of time and energy that this peripatetic existence entails.

Apart from those who benefit financially from the displacement, like the hoteliers, or those for whom the arrangement provides a welcome opportunity to create a second (or even a third) 'menage,' most people agree that shuffling the Parliament between its two homes is an undignified and expensive nonsense.

More, because as there is no reason requiring the Parliament to meet in Strasbourg - its casting as a species of symbolic Maginot line has never been really convincing - this piece of self-serving flummery is an idiocy that only provides ammunition to those who decry the EU and all its works.

European Institute of Technology

Most agree that it should end. The only question is how to bring this about.

For though the Parliament has acquired manifold powers over the years, including the cataclysmic ability to sack the entire European Commission, it is still not officially able to determine where it should meet.

More in hope than in expectation, Josep Borrell, the sagacious President of the Parliament, is attempting to have the issue placed on the agenda of European leaders when they meet in the European Council next month.

Whether the Austrian Presidency will let him is irrelevant. For changing the Parliament's locus would involve a change to the Treaty of Amsterdam for which unanimity is required.

As France has let it be known that if push comes to shove she will vote 'no' - the issue will not be pursued.

French intransigence may prove short-sighted however. For there is on the table - for the moment at least - a well-researched quid pro quo: to wit using the potentially redundant Parliament building to house a putative European Institute of Technology.

As plenty of other countries would like to host the institution, this offer may not always be there.

So France might be better off seizing the offer while it is still extant. For it is pretty clear that the Parliament's Strasbourg days are already numbered whatever the Treaty of Amsterdam says.

Parliament walk out

Unless France gives in with good grace, the danger is that the Parliament will simply walk with its feet.

Or rather, refuse to walk with its feet; simply refuse to travel to Strasbourg; simply refuse to enact legislation unless its sensible and legitimate demands are met. A Parliament is, after all, sovereign to itself. Individuals may break the law but if the European Parliament collectively decides not to sit in Strasbourg no power on earth can coerce it to do so, treaty or no treaty.

History teaches us that many parliaments reach a defining moment when their democratic legitimacy is used as a pick to break an enclosing constitutional carapace. The French Assemblée Nationale owes its very existence to such audacity.

In recent years some parliamentarians have risked much for this principle.

When, for example, the Lithuanian Parliament illicitly debated national sovereignty it expected the tanks to come bursting through the chamber wall at any moment.

Danton's cry of 'De l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours l'audace!' is still ringing down the centuries.

The European Parliament need fear no tanks in doing what is right for Europe. They require precious little of Danton's boldness.

Taking the matter of the Strasbourg seat into their own hands would be a small step for the Parliament but a giant leap for European democracy. And for common sense.

The author is editor of EuropeWorld

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's, not those of EUobserver.

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