THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s controversial meandering between Brussels and Strasbourg is once again in focus as 180 MEPs seek the cancellation of a second week of sittings in the French city in September.
The parliament typically sits for one week each month in Strasbourg, but meets there twice in September because there is no August sitting. The September sessions are typically scheduled weeks apart, necessitating two round trips in a single month.
The monthly commute, a perennial controversy in Europe, has long been criticised as a wasteful inconvenience and is estimated to cost some €200 million per year to ferry MEPs, officials, files and equipment between the two cities.
As MEPs prepare to vote next week on the parliament’s 2012 timetable, Tory MEP Ashley Fox has revived a proposal to conduct the two September sessions over the course of four days that month in 2012.
This is permissible under the EU treaties, which call for 12 Strasbourg sessions per year. Earlier this year MEPs defeated a similar proposal in respect of the sessions planned for September 2011 by a margin of 380 votes to 265.
However, Mr Fox said he had since been approached by a number of MEPs who voted against the plan who said they had changed their minds since then due to the financial crisis.
He has tabled the proposal by way of an amendment to the timetable proposal, which goes before a vote at the Strasbourg plenary session next Wednesday.
“I need 40 signatures to formally submit it and I am pleased to say we’re up to 180 at the moment,” Mr Fox said.
Scrapping the second Strasbourg commute in September could save €15 million and some 1,600 tonnes of carbon emissions, he believes. “This is a modest proposal at a time when the British taxpayer is hard-pressed and the Irish taxpayer is even harder pressed.”
Irish MEPs who have signed the proposal include Nessa Childers of Labour, Gay Mitchell and Sean Kelly of Fine Gael and Liam Aylward of Fianna Fáil.
Numerous officials from other EU institutions and national governments move en masse with 736 MEPs from Brussels to the French city for one week every month.
