Prudence versus principle

Date: 18/07/1996

THE long-running battle over the seat of the European Parliament is set to surface again in the wake of this week's vote by MEPs to hold only 11 plenary sessions in Strasbourg next year instead of the 12 laid down in an agreement struck in 1992 aimed at ending the dispute.

The decision to cut the number of Strasbourg sessions for the second year running will pour fuel on the flames of the row which erupted last year after a similar vote prompted legal action by Paris.

The French challenge rests on the wording of the deal struck at the December 1992 Edinburgh summit when EU leaders shared out the right to play host to a series of Union bodies between the member states.

Faced with France's determination to hold on to its lucrative share of the money-spinning cake, Union leaders confirmed Strasbourg as the permanent seat of the Parliament and declared that “12 periods of monthly plenary sessions” would be held there.

The European Court of Justice has yet to rule on France's case and in the meantime, the bickering over whether the parliamentary travelling circus should be forced to remain on the road or allowed to determine its own destiny has continued unabated.

Those in favour of moving the Parliament to Brussels, where it has a luxury new home built for it by the Belgian government, on which it is already paying the rent, argue that Brussels is a more practical place to do business and it should be left to MEPs to decide on their own internal procedures - rather than having a regime imposed on them by EU heads of state and government.

Surely they have a point. MEPs are often portrayed by the media as the privileged holders of first-class seats on a luxury Euro gravy train.

It may be unfair, but it is an image which has lodged in the minds of many ordinary members of the public.

A recent report by Spanish MEP Juan Manuel Fabra Valles which estimated parliamentary spending in 1997 at 884.38 million ecu once again ignited the debate over the cost to hard-pressed EU taxpayers of maintaining parliamentary chambers and offices in both Brussels and Strasbourg and paying for delegates, their assistants and parliamentary officials to move from one site to the other.

One of the Parliament's key jobs - through its budgetary powers - is to act as a guardian of the Union's purse-strings, and yet it cannot decide for itself whether this is a price worth paying.

Member states are expected to call next week for up to 2.5 billion ecu of cuts in the EU's 1997 budget to reduce the financial pressure on governments battling to meet the convergence criteria for economic and monetary union by the 1 January 1999 deadline. In these difficult times, it is more vital than ever to show that the money in Union coffers is being put to the best possible use.

Resolving this issue will not be easy, but that should not deter those on both sides of the argument from trying to do so. For it is only when the Union is seen to be tackling such apparent examples of waste and inefficiency on its own doorstep that it will be able to convince Europe's taxpayers that their money is being well spent.