Logistical nightmare looms after Nice summit deal on extra MEPs

Date: 21/12/00

By John Shelley

THE EUROPEAN Parliament is counting the cost of the surprise decision taken by EU leaders at last week's summit in Nice to increase the number of MEPs to 732, instead of 700 as previously agreed.

Parliament officials say the commitment to augment the assembly to 732 members when the Union enlarges has come as a body blow to planners already struggling to find a way to shoe-horn more Euro MPs into existing buildings.

Heads of state and government pledged not to allow the Parliament to grow beyond 700 in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, and Euro MPs have criticised leaders for disregarding this promise in Nice and handing out seats as bargaining chips to clinch deals in other areas of treaty reform.

Neither the assembly's official home in Strasbourg nor its Brussels buildings, already close to bursting with the current 626 members, has office space for more than 700 MEPs and their assistants. Officials say they will now have to buy or rent new buildings in Brussels, while in Strasbourg - where the new Parliament building has been open for only 18 months - the extra staff will have to use outdated offices the current building was designed to replace.

"We could have coped with 700, that was the maximum we were envisaging. It really was a shock to everyone when it came back up to 732," said a Parliament official. "Now we are really going to have to put our noses to the grindstone and work out how to get everybody in."

The decision to increase the number of MEPs will also cost Union citizens millions of euro a year. Annual pay and basic expenses for the additional 32 and their assistants are likely to cost around 8 million euro, even before the figures for the extra accommodation and travel allowances are added in.

The logistics of preparing the Parliament for expansion were already causing migraines for assembly chiefs. The 74 extra MEPs originally anticipated would make the Parliament Europe's biggest elected assembly. There is little space to house these awaited members and the hundreds of translators needed as the number of official EU languages doubles.

With no more space in the Strasbourg building, many will probably be forced to make do with poorly equipped offices in the Winston Churchill building now being used by officials. In Brussels, the space shortage is more dire and the Parliament says it will have no choice but to scramble for buildings to buy or rent in the city's already overcrowded Union quarter.

The European Parliament is counting the cost of the surprise decision taken by EU leaders at the Nice Summit to increase the number of MEPs to 732, instead of 700 as previously agreed.