Site of European Parliament seat is sight for sore eyes

Date: 09/11/1995

By Geoff Meade

MANY years ago, in an age of innocence when Maastricht was merely the capital of Limburg province noted for nothing more than the magnificent sixth-century Church of St. Servatius, unless you want to count its prodigious industrial output and its strategic importance on the borders of Belgium and Germany, a wise man came unto me and he sayeth: “The biggest problem we have is the sight of the Parliament.”

What he actually said was the “site” of the Parliament, but I couldn't possibly have known that. Having then just gazed upon the Palais de l'Europe in Strasbourg for the first time, it was obvious he had a very good point. It was and is hideous. It looks like a Fifties radio, which is fine only if you are a Fifties radio. The new European Parliament building in Brussels is no better. It looks like a Fifties juke-box. The same qualification applies.

The new European Parliament building, now under construction in Strasbourg, is still too embryonic to be so lightly dismissed on aesthetic grounds. But it will be hideous, have no doubt of that, if not physically then politically and economically.

I went to visit it the other day and found the beginnings of a monstrous blemish on the banks of the River Ill (as in ill, as in unwell, or sick). Anonymous white exterior walls edged in blue are looming out of the landscape, sprawling across a wasteland between fine examples of those large Germanic town houses with symmetrical net curtains and small aggressive dogs in their courtyards.

I walked around in wonder and despair that something which will cost squillions of ecus could be so far below the architectural poverty line. Then a burly man in hard hat came out of a flimsy plywood door and explained that this Lego village was merely a collection of temporary workmen's huts. The new Parliament, he said, pointing across the water to a pile of nondescript brickwork in the distance, is over there.

But it was too far to visit, as indeed is Strasbourg, and you don't need a map or a Masters degree in common sense to know that.

The sight, site and seat of the Parliament is the longest running saga in the history of European integration. There are now five hemi-cycles in three countries, although those of you for whom Maastricht is nothing more than the birthplace of a treaty will be unaware of the ghostly existence of two European Parliaments in Luxembourg.

The very first and original European Parliament chamber is in the Schuman building and is used now for visitors' groups. Students of Europe's seat sit in the very seats where the delegated politicians from the six member states used to sit .

The second chamber is across the car park, hanging over one of Luxembourg's deep ravines, pinioned to the cliff edge by a series of giant grappling hooks.

But its hold in the early Eighties over Europe's representatives of the people, by this time democratically elected, was less secure. Now only the rump of the Parliament's staff still work there, snuggled in their offices hard against the cliff face. Their mail is still delivered to the optimistically-named 'NHC' - the 'New Hemi-Cycle'.

But even when it was new, it was a condemned building, specifically condemned by British Conservative Tom Spencer, now chairman of the UK's Euro Tories, who rose to his feet the first time MEPs met there and protested that he could not function properly in a chamber with decor which looked like the inside of a Moscow theatre in the Fifties.

He didn't have to: the place was pensioned off as too small and the last time that hemi-cycle was used for Euro-business was for a Socialist-inspired pensioner's parliament a couple of years ago. The Luxembourg government put a brave face on things, insisting that the place had been designed in any case to cater for business conferences and the like. It is a line which the Belgian government will take if its Brussels juke-box becomes redundant because of the new Strasbourg radio. It is a line the French government will take if the vast bulk of MEPs have their way and overturn the EU summit agreement in 1992 which confirmed Strasbourg's position as the official sight, site and seat of the Parliament.

But supporters of Strasbourg are far less worried by the prospect of a looming courtroom showdown than they are by another ominous development. Last month, when Euro MPs debated l'affaire nucleaire at the plenary, there were more journalists watching from Brussels than there were actually in Strasbourg.

As the Commission's remote control cinema screen lowered itself into place in the Breydel press room to beam Euro MPs and Commissioners to reporters larger than life, chief spokesman Klaus van der Pas said he would do nothing to undermine attendance at the European Parliament.

He was, he insisted, just providing a service. But that service was gratefully received and plenary followers are getting out of the habit of going to Strasbourg as the Commission audio-visual service pipes more and more of its doings to Brussels, not to mention staging 'inter-active' press conferences with Commissioners.

There are those trying to stop it, but it is too late, and Euro MPs are naturally concerned: they can put up with the peripatetic lifestyle if they have to, because one airport and one hemi-cycle is much like another, but they won't put up with it if they can't bend the ear of journalists over a kir royale when they want to.

But that's the way it's going: fuzzy logic is turning the people's representatives into two-dimensional figures viewed through a screen darkly.

Meanwhile the walls of the new Fifties radio are rising out of the ground in Strasbourg almost as fast as the Parliament budget is haemorrhaging millions in rent on the Brussels Fifties juke-box.

The workman in his hard hat disappeared to consult his plans and I headed into town to board a tourist boat, just in case satellite broadcasts make future visits to Strasbourg superfluous. We poodled through the canals and I dozed quietly against the plexi-glass. Then the guide's English accent suddenly penetrated my subconscious...” and 'ere on ze right we 'ave ze sight of ze European Parliament...”

He must have meant site.