Parties square up for legal battle over ‘travelling circus’

Date: 04/01/1996

By Fiona McHugh

THE fight over the seat of the European Parliament is set to rage on this year, with France challenging the institution to a legal duel and MEPs raising their cry for greater self-determination in the run up to the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC).

Both sides are confident that they will emerge victorious from the battle in the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the outcome of which should determine, once and for all, where MEPs are to carry out their work.

“We have a very strong case. Every other parliament has the right to decide where it sits. I do not see why we should not,” says British Socialist Terence Wynn, adding that MEPs would seek the right to determine their own seat at this year's IGC.

But those comments were dismissed by a French government spokesman as bravado in the face of inevitable defeat.

“Of course they talk about winning, but in reality they do not have a hope. Do you think that France would have proceeded with legal action if she were not sure of success?” he said.

The decision to take the Parliament to the Luxembourg-based Court came late last year, in the wake of a resolution passed by MEPs to reduce the number of plenary sessions to be held in Strasbourg in 1996 from 12 to 11.

This, says the French government, breaches an agreement reached by EU government leaders in Edinburgh in 1992 guaranteeing France a minimum of 12 parliamentary sessions.

The agreement also upheld Luxembourg's right to house the institution's administrative staff.

Since then, however, MEPs in favour of moving to Brussels have been conducting what their opponents call 'a war of attrition', increasingly shifting the site of parliamentary work to Brussels.

MEPs claim that shuttling between their three homes costs taxpayers 125 million ecu each year on average, equivalent to 25&percent; of the Parliament's total budget.

“Strasbourg is a nice place, but not nice enough to justify the absurd cost of this travelling circus,” claims Swedish Deputy Per Gahrton. “It is absurd that France should be able to block a more efficient Union. We have a responsibility towards our electorate.”

To get to Strasbourg from his constituency in the south of Sweden, Gahrton flies to Copenhagen and then on to Frankfurt, where he catches a bus to the French city. The journey takes, on average, eight or nine hours each way.

MEPs are joined each month by a convoy of trucks carrying some 900 giant metal crates, weighing an average of 40 kilos each. Inside these crates are the mountains of paperwork needed to ensure the week's proceedings run smoothly.

Despite the bad publicity which the so-called travelling circus has earned the EU, France is determined to hang on to its hard-won share of the spoils.

According to the city of Strasbourg, which benefits substantially from the current situation, France is motivated by politics and not economics.

“The founding fathers of the Union recognised the need to represent all of the EU members states and so decided not to set up the institutions in just one place,” explains an aide to Strasbourg Mayor Catherine Trautmann. “It is not only an economic Europe which we must build, but also a Europe of politics.”

But most MEPs believe that it is money which is the most important issue at stake.

Trautmann's office was unable to put a figure on how much the monthly influx of MEPs, officials and business people on expense accounts is worth to the city of Strasbourg, but officials there admit the sums involved are substantial and help keep a number of local businesses afloat.

No date has yet been set for the French case against the Parliament to be heard by the ECJ, but officials say it is unlikely to happen until much later this year - by which time, most of the 1996 sessions at the centre of the controversy will have already taken place.