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European Parliament (Two-seat Operation)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

In the week when the Prime Minister is at a special European Council meeting in Brussels to negotiate the multi-annual financial framework, with Europe on a precarious financial and social footing, the debate is important and timely. The subject goes to the heart of the European debate—the economic debate on how Europe spends its money, and a wider debate about what Europe was intended to be and what it has become. The issue is the ending of the two-seat arrangement of the European Parliament, which has become known, not inappropriately, as the Strasbourg circus.

The European Parliament is the only Assembly in the world with more than one permanent seat, and the only one that does not have the power to determine its own location. The two-seat arrangement was formalised in the 1997 treaty of Amsterdam, compelling the Parliament to sit in Strasbourg for 48 days every year, for 12 plenary sessions, in which legislation receives its final vote. For the rest of the year Parliament sits in Brussels, where virtually all the other institutions of the EU are based. The reason is symbolic: a sign of Franco-German reconciliation—a Parliament held on the fields of previous conflict.

As to the practical reality of that symbolism—it is expensive. Brussels is the place where Committee and political group meetings take place, and where Members of the European Parliament have their offices. It is where most other EU institutions, such as the Commission and the Council, are based, and where most of the staff live; so when the monthly plenary sessions take place thousands of people must decamp to Strasbourg: MEPs, their staff, civil servants, Government representatives and diplomats. Lorries are stacked up with office documents and papers, and hit the roads to France. Transport connections to Strasbourg are so bad that it is not possible to fly there from 21 of the 27 EU countries. That means that MEPs—including those from the UK—must take lengthy two to three-leg trips to get to Strasbourg.

The amazing thing is that all that happens so that people can travel to a replica of the Brussels Chamber, in Strasbourg. The part that would be funny, if it were not true, is that the Strasbourg Chamber is left empty for 317 days a year. It is Monty Pythonesque—the Monty Python Strasbourg circus; but it is not funny, because it is expensive. It costs about €200 million each year, which is about €1 billion over the seven-year budgetary period. Each year about 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide is released from the convoys of lorries, flights and cars transporting paper, politicians, officials and forms on the 500 km journey to France. Well over 100,000 tonnes of CO₂ is estimated to be emitted in that way over the seven-year budgetary period. Once, in 2008, the travelling circus was cancelled because the Strasbourg buildings were in need of repair and it was not possible to go there. On that one occasion €4 million was saved.

Let us not forget that what I have described is happening at a time when politicians across Europe are scrabbling for budget savings. They are cutting public services in a

desperate attempt to regain control of the continent’s finances. If we want a simple way to save £1 billion over this budgetary period, with no cuts to public services and no extreme pain—no outcries across Europe, rioting on the streets of Greece or plastic bullets fired at students in Spain—I would suggest to the Minister, and to the Prime Minister, that surely this is it.

When we consider what we can do, things become a bit frustrating. The two-seat arrangement is embedded in treaties, which, of course, require all 27 member states to agree to an end to what is, frankly, a farce. My colleague Ashley Fox MEP has been doing a fantastic job gathering signatures to a petition in this country, to try to force a debate on the issue in Parliament. It can be found at www.stopthestrasbourgcircus.com. However, it is not only in the UK that a consensus is building, at a time of great financial difficulty, that this unfunny farce needs to stop. Through exceptional and quite historic work Ashley Fox has demonstrated that there is tremendous momentum and desire among a majority of MEPs to put an end to the situation. He has significant support from our European neighbours. He gathered the number of signatures necessary in the European Parliament to hold a secret ballot on just reducing the number of times the Parliament decamps to Strasbourg. Without the pressure of party Whips, what the French have called l’amendement Fox was carried by a majority of 104. That may seem a small step but it is significant in demonstrating that the will of the European Parliament is to do the sensible thing, and that the Parliament is being held back by an anachronistic, impractical, regulatory democratic deficit.

There is not just a little consensus. Ending the Strasbourg circus—the two-seat arrangement—was in the coalition agreement. Hon. Members will know that often there are not many questions to do with Europe on which the entire House will agree; but the two-seat arrangement is such a question. The coalition agreement pledges to end the Strasbourg circus. I have tabled an early-day motion which has support from across the political parties. We have support from our European neighbours as well. The change would save £1 billion in the next EU budget.