Strasbourg will stay, Sarkozy tells MEPs

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ruled out any chance of moving the European Parliament away from Strasbourg despite a renewed campaign to host other EU bodies and research institutes in the assembly’s current buildings in the Alsatian capital.

Sarkozy was asked by Green group vice-president Daniel Cohn-Bendit during a meeting of leaders of the European Parliament’s political groups in Strasbourg last week (13 November) whether he would consider changing the Parliament’s seat. Sarkozy replied: "I am a flexible politician but on this question there can be no possibility."

The French president’s comments came as the 130-member strong Campaign for Parliamentary Reform (CPR) launched a new bid to stop the Parliament meeting in the Alsatian capital. Currently, Parliament has offices in three cities in three different countries. While 12 plenary sessions a year are held in Strasbourg, several smaller plenary sessions, as well as committee and political group meetings take place in Brussels while some administrative services are based in Luxembourg. These arrangements are written down in the EU’s treaty and can only be changed by unanimity.

The cost of maintaining offices in three cities and the travelling that this requires is estimated at €250 million per year. But in addition to the financial burden on the EU’s administrative budget that the split-seat arrangement entails, many MEPs as well as conservation groups claim that the monthly travelling between Parliament’s different seats is producing every year 18,900 million tones of carbon dioxide (CO2). They say that this risks weakening Parliament’s political stance as an institution pushing for determined action against climate change.

CPR, which brings together reform-minded MEPs, sent a letter on Monday (12 November) asking the French president to consider alternatives for Strasbourg. A discussion paper also sent by CPR says: "We have great expectation of the new president of France who, during the first months of his presidency, has demonstrated his capacity to cut ties with older and obsolete traditions."

Alexander Alvaro, a German Liberal MEP and one of the leaders of the CPR, said that there had to be a clear alternative for the city of Strasbourg. "It would do more for the prestige of Strasbourg and its economy if there was a full-time institution here".

Alvaro said that he was not too disappointed by Sarkozy’s comments in the group leaders’ meeting. "I don’t think Sarkozy has really thought the issue through. It’s more the usual French politicians’ Pavlovian response when the subject of Strasbourg and the European Parliament is raised," he said.

Alvaro added that no one had expected the issue to be resolved within this five year mandate of the Parliament but public awareness about Strasbourg was growing. "We’ve achieved more than people think. It’s a case of constant dripping wearing away a stone," he said. "No one’s going to give up just because Sarkozy said ‘no’," he added. The CPR will organise a meeting of "young" MEPs under 40 in December to discuss options, he said.

The CPR has proposed moving a number of EU institutions to Strasbourg. It suggests that research centres such as the European Institute of Technology (EIT) and the European Research Council (ERC) could be housed in Parliament’s current building in Strasbourg.

The CPR has proposed creating a new European patent court in the French city to add to the city’s focus on innovation and new technologies.

To maintain Strasbourg’s importance as a centre of European political life, the group is also advocating holding the four annual EU summits in Strasbourg.

Another proposal is that Strasbourg should host a new training centre for EU diplomats who will staff the planned external action service to help carry out the Union’s foreign policy.

Other ideas include a European centre for co-ordination of European energy policy. As the European Court of Human Rights, a body attached to Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, is already located in Strasbourg, the CPR is also proposing moving the European Court of Justice from its current location in Luxembourg to Strasbourg. Consultative EU bodies, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee, could also be moved to Strasbourg. As they are not directly involved in the EU legislative proces and their move away from Brussels would not affect their capacity to operate or delay the EU decision-making process.

But MEPs in favour of keeping Strasbourg as the main seat of the European Parliament have launched their own campaign. In a statement, the Working Group for European Democracy, led by Jean Spautz, a Luxembourgeois and a former European Parliament president, and German MEP Bernd Posselt, of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), said that Strasbourg was the "democratic face of Europe". Moving the Parliament to Brussels entirely would be "dangerous" and risked losing the assembly in the "shadows of the Brussels bureaucracy", the statement said.

Posselt accused Alvaro and the CPR of making factual errors and publishing misleading figures. He said that Strasbourg could be the only seat for the Parliament, rather than the assembly having offices in Brussels and Luxembourg. "If its plenary work and administration were concentrated [in Strasbourg], which can be done without treaty change, the costs and CO2 emissions could be reduced at a stroke," Posselt said, in response to Alvaro’s argument that moving the Parliament down to Strasbourg once a month generated as much CO2 as 13,000 transatlantic flights.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has ruled out any chance of moving the European Parliament away from Strasbourg despite a renewed campaign to host other EU bodies and research institutes in the assembly’s current buildings in the Alsatian capital.