Strasbourg – at any cost

Date: 25/07/1996

Will these people stop at nothing to keep the European Parliament in Strasbourg?

Not only is construction work continuing on a new hemi-cycle a stone's throw from the Council of Europe building at vast cost to the French public purse, but the taxpayers of France have now discovered that they forked out 265,432 ecu last year in fares for taxis and special buses to ferry MEPs and other dignitaries to and from airports and railway stations. Who runs up the biggest share of the bill? Euro MPs, in town for just one week in four, generated 222,200 ecu of the total, with the Council of Europe chalking up a much more modest 43,200 ecu.

This may be a high price to pay for keeping the Union's democratic heart beating in Strasbourg, as the newspaper Dernière Nouvelles d'Alsace pointed out, but at least there is plenty of room in the lifts.

Socialist leader in the Parliament Pauline Green may be an advocate of a permanent move to Brussels, but that has not stopped her complaining that there are not enough lifts in the Espace Leopold building. Those that do exist are always “filled to capacity”, she grumbles.

Hänsch tried to mollify her during a recent plenary session by saying that the problem would “probably” be resolved when the building was finished.