Comings and goings in the Union’s annual ‘road show’

Date: 03/10/1996

To some, October is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, to others its yellowing leaves and chilly evenings are a sign that summer is well and truly over.

For the Council of Ministers, October means Luxembourg.

The Grand Duchy is one of the lesser-known stops on the itinerary of what critics mischievously describe as the EU's 'travelling circus'.

Because of a quirk in the 1965 European Community merger treaty, ministers are obliged to hold their regular meetings there for three months a year - in April, June and October.

Elsewhere, 'informal councils' are proving popular additions to peripatetic EU ministers' schedules.

As with summits, these meetings are held in the country which currently holds the EU presidency, often at beauty spots outside the capital city. Recent venues for such informal gatherings have included Verona and Otranto during the Italian presidency and Killarney and Tralee in the current Irish term.

But the most infamous fixture on the European tour is, without doubt, the European Parliament's regular plenary sessions in Strasbourg. For one week every month, the Parliament relocates en masse from offices in Brussels and Luxembourg to a rented building in the north-eastern French city, at an estimated cost to EU taxpayers of 120 million ecu a year.

Parliamentary meetings in Strasbourg were originally intended to be a temporary measure while a permanent home was found for the institution. But almost 40 years later, the Parliament is still based in three different countries.

Although the Council's thrice-yearly 'works outings' to the EU's smallest member state are not on the same scale as the Parliament's monthly mass exodus, many insiders argue that they too involve a large number of people in a great deal of unnecessary travel.

“For a General Affairs Council, up to 100 people from the secretariat will have to travel to Luxembourg,” says one Council insider.

Add to that ministers, support staff for 15 national delegations, delegations from non-EU states and countries wishing to join the Union, one or sometimes more European Commissioners and their Cabinet members, press officers, extra security guards, chauffeurs, journalists and television crews and the figure is nearer 500 - roughly a quarter of the turnout for a typical jaunt to Strasbourg.

As one EU official who lives and works in Luxembourg puts it: “You can always tell when the Council is in town.”

Obviously, the exact number of extra mobile telephones and Mercedes varies according to the relative importance of the Council - a meeting of foreign ministers inevitably attracts a larger crowd than a discussion on civil protection attended by 'second division' representatives such as ambassadors or state secretaries.

But whatever the occasion, the feeling amongst many Luxembourg regulars is that their energies could be better employed elsewhere. “Many of them are fed up, especially those who have to go to numerous meetings,” says one.

“For us, it really wastes time. You cannot work while you are travelling,” he continues, bemoaning the fact that Luxembourg is a two-and-a-half-hour motorway drive or a three-hour train ride away from Brussels.

“Meetings in Luxembourg often break up in the early hours of the morning. We have to work into the night and then be back at the office in Brussels the following day,” complains another. Indeed, there have been a number of road accidents involving Eurocrats driving home from Luxembourg after long sessions and late dinners.

The number of people attending ministerial meetings in Luxembourg has in fact decreased in recent years.

Thanks to advances in information technology, all the Council's translation staff now remain permanently 'back at base'. Documents are translated in Brussels, then faxed or e-mailed to waiting delegates and journalists in the Grand Duchy.

Within the past year, a television link between Brussels and Luxembourg has been established which enables press conferences and other footage from Council meetings to be broadcast on 'Europe by Satellite', the European Commission's satellite television service.

But Council officials say this particular innovation has not had a marked effect on the number of journalists attending meetings.

“Numbers have been falling off generally in recent years,” says one insider, adding: “Council business is by nature unpredictable. A press conference provisionally scheduled for five o'clock in the afternoon may not take place until two o'clock the following morning. If people really need to know what is happening, they just have to come here and wait.”

The service seems to have had more effect on attendance in Strasbourg, where proceedings tend to be clearly scheduled and normally run to time. Many Brussels-based journalists are now choosing to forego the gruelling four-hour drive to Strasbourg and to follow events from the comfort of the Commission's press centre in Brussels.

But despite what the system's many detractors may say, the three months of meetings in the Grand Duchy and the monthly parliamentary sessions in Strasbourg look set to remain permanent fixtures in the EU calendar.

“Member states could have changed the situation in 1993 when the new European institutions were given out, but they chose not to,” says a Council insider.

“The meetings are now part of the acquis communautaire [the treaties and other legal documents which set out how the EU should function].”

Officials say nobody has raised the issue of Luxembourg's role as occasional host to the Council of Ministers for some time. But the same cannot be said of Strasbourg, with MEPs in favour of a full-time move to Brussels constantly on the look-out for opportunities to press their case.

However, the French remain determined not to give away their share of the EU spoils, and the Luxembourg government, too, has always strongly resisted any suggestion that it be stripped of its right to a slice of the cake.

Indeed, on occasions when emergency meetings have been held in Brussels during April, June or October, the Luxembourgers have insisted on extra sessions in the Grand Duchy to make up the shortfall.

It is not hard to see why some Luxembourgers are so attached to the Council. Apart from the kudos the tiny country derives from being the focal point of EU political life for three months every year, the influx of so many well-heeled Eurocrats and attendant hangers-on clearly has a significant impact on the economic life of a town with only 75,000 inhabitants. (More people live in Brussels than in the entire country of Luxembourg.)

In addition to the Council of Ministers' flying visits, there are also 7,700 European civil servants and their families living permanently in Luxembourg. The European Parliament's secretariat, various services of the European Commission, the European Court of Justice, the European Investment Bank and the Court of Auditors are all based in the Grand Duchy.

A visit to Strasbourg outside plenary week reveals at a glance why the city is so desperate not to give up its right to play host to the Parliament.

The empty streets, restaurants and hotels are in stark contrast to the bustle which brings the city alive when the MEPs are in town.

EU heads of state and government agreed at their 1992 Edinburgh summit that the Parliament would meet 12 times a year in the French city, and Paris is fiercely protective of the Strasbourg sessions.

It has threatened to bring EU business grinding to a halt on a number of occasions when it felt it was in danger of losing them.

The Edinburgh decision stemmed from French warnings that it would veto the distribution of new EU agencies if the Strasbourg sessions were not guaranteed. In 1994, Paris threatened to disrupt imminent Euro-elections by refusing to agree to boundary changes in European parliamentary constituencies unless the Parliament agreed to sign the lease on a new multi-million-ecu building in the city.

The French government is currently challenging the Parliament's decision in September last year to hold only 11 Strasbourg sessions in 1996 at the European Court of Justice. It claims this violates the Edinburgh agreement.

Put simply, Eurocrats mean Euromoney. The monthly cash injection from EU officials and their entourages puts millions of extra ecu in the city's coffers every year.

Ludicrous as it seems to many, there is little indication that the European meetings merry-go-round will come to a halt in the near future. If anything, decisions taken at Edinburgh and at a subsequent summit in Brussels have embedded it even more firmly into EU law.

Many people argue that the Strasbourg saga, in particular, suits rather nicely those national governments which are opposed to any strengthening of the Parliament's powers.

After all, if MEPs are continually being shunted around the continent, they have less time to scrutinise member states' activities.

For the time being, this is one show which seems certain to stay very firmly on the road.