MEPs get on their bikes after taxi dispute

Date: 04/07/02

By Martin Banks

FRENCH president Jacques Chirac has been asked to help resolve a row which has forced some MEPs to resort to pedal power to get around Strasbourg.

The dispute involves the European Parliament's contract with a local taxi company to ferry the 626 MEPs to and from the city's airport. The long-standing arrangement has ended after a French court recently upheld a complaint from a rival taxi company and annulled the contract.

As a result, members attending this week's Strasbourg plenary had to organise their own transport around the French city.

Leaders of each of the main political groups were this week locked in negotiations over how to resolve the dispute. Monica Frassoni, leader of the Greens-European Free Alliance group, suggested that Parliament provide cycles for members.

The impasse also prompted Dutch Liberal MEP Elly Plooij-Van Gorsel to mount a scathing attack on the French authorities.

'First, they make it almost impossible for us to get here, then they make it difficult for us to get around the city,' she said in an address to the plenary. 'What else can the French do to poison our lives in Strasbourg?'

The problem became serious enough for Parliament President Pat Cox to hand a letter of complaint about the French court decision to Chirac at the recent Seville summit.

Cox told this week's session that alternative arrangements had been made for MEPs, including doubling the number of bicycles available, 'particularly for the fit members among us'.

He also hopes that Fabienne Keller, the mayor of Strasbourg, will intervene. She has just replaced Nicole Fontaine as an MEP following the latter's appointment as industry minister in Chirac's government.

French president Jacques Chirac has been asked to help resolve a row which has forced some MEPs to resort to pedal power to get around Strasbourg.