MEPs want land included in purchase of buildings

By Simon Taylor

Date: 22/06/06

Members of the European Parliament's budgets committee are threatening to block plans by the assembly's administration to buy two buildings in Strasbourg unless the purchase includes the land.

Dutch Liberal MEP Jan Mulder, responsible for the Parliament's buildings on the budgets committee, said: "In every other case where the Parliament has bought its buildings it has bought the land at the same time." Leaving the issue of the land to later negotiations with its owner, the city of Strasbourg, would "put the Parliament in a weaker position", said Mulder.

Speaking on behalf of the budgets committee, which controls spending on buildings, Mulder gave this message to Parliament's President Josep Borrell and 14 vice-presidents, the bureau, in a meeting on 20 June.

MEPs have put on hold a previous bid to buy two buildings they use in Strasbourg, Winston Churchill and Salvador de Mariaga, after it emerged that the city of Strasbourg had taken around EUR 80 million of the rent paid to the buildings' owners, Dutch property fund SCI-Erasme, over the last 27 years.

Under the original deal, the Parliament would have paid a symbolic price of EUR 1 for acquiring the land.

But despite setting up a special group of MEPs to inquire into the affair, the bureau, which deals with administrative issues, wanted to continue with negotiations to purchase the two properties.

The bureau is contemplating paying EUR 107m, which represents the price it was originally considering paying (EUR 136m), minus EUR 29m in compensation the city was requesting for the rental income.

But MEPs on the working group looking into the affair believe this price should be lower. "We know the price for the rent is inflated but it could have been even more inflated, especially on indexation," Mulder said. "We have to respect Parliament's procedures and wait for the results of the working group," he said.

But the bureau is warning that unless the decision is approved by early September the money could be lost and the Parliament could be sued by Strasbourg.

Article reports on the latest developments in the dispute between the European Parliament and the city of Strasbourg over a rental deal for two buildings. Members of the European Parliament's Budgets Committee were threatening to block plans by the assembly's administration to buy the two buildings in Strasbourg unless the purchase would include the land.