Strasbourg chief denies Parliament rent rip-off

By Simon Taylor

Date: 27/04/06

The Strasbourg city authorities have hit back at criticism from the European Parliament for taking a slice of the rent the assembly pays for two buildings.

Robert Grossman, president of the Strasbourg region, said that the Parliament had had the chance to challenge the rental agreement over the last 27 years but had failed to do so.

"For all the years [since 1979 when the deal to rent the buildings was struck] the rent could be discussed and reviewed. We have faith in the experts of the Parliament, [which] would never have paid a rent it judged too high."

He denied he was suggesting that the Parliament knew that the city was taking a share of the rent. He would not say why the city had not explained earlier to the Parliament that it was keeping a share of the rent.

The rent dispute intensified this week, causing a crisis in relations between the Parliament and the city of Strasbourg. Members of the budgetary control committee decided on 25 April to launch an inquiry into the affair and called on the city authorities to grant it access to all documents relating to the case.

MEPs said they would refer the case to the EU's anti-fraud office OLAF if the documents were not made available within a reasonable time-scale.

They called for the European Court of Auditors to draft a report by July on the Parliament's spending on buildings and for the French audit office to look into the case.

The committee decided to delay approving the Parliament's 2004 accounts, the first time it has ever done so, until the matter is cleared up.

The discovery that the city has been receiving a share of the rent came to light after mayor Fabienne Keller revealed that Strasbourg would have received €29 million in compensation had Parliament gone ahead with plans to buy the two buildings for €136m.

The Parliament has frozen rental payments to the city of Strasbourg and suspended plans to buy the two buildings, Winston Churchill and Salvador de Madariaga, once it emerged that the city had been receiving up to 25% of the annual €10.5m rent paid by the assembly to the owners of the building SCI Erasme.

French Green MEP Gérard Onesta, who is in charge of the Parliament's buildings, told the budgetary control committee that the city might have received around €2.7m last year.

The Strasbourg authorities admitted that there was a difference between the rent they received and the amount they passed on to the company which owns the two buildings.

They justified retaining a share of the rent to cover the cost of improvement works they have carried out to the building as well as insuring against the risk that the Parliament might leave Strasbourg, which would leave the city to pay the rent to the owners.

The UK centre-right MEP Edward McMillan-Scott said the professed need to cover the risk of the Parliament leaving the city was "illogical", as the 1998 Amsterdam Treaty fixed Strasbourg as the seat of the Parliament.

Grossman said that the city was in "negotiations" with the Parliament and that he and Keller would see Parliament President Josep Borrell in the coming days.

The Parliament will hold an open day in Strasbourg on Sunday (30 April). The city of Strasbourg will be an exhibitor at the event.

The Strasbourg city authorities in April 2006 rejected criticism from the European Parliament for taking a share of the rent the assembly had been paying for two buildings since 1979.

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