What price political expediency?

Date: 07/12/1995

The long-running saga over the site of the European Parliament and the buildings in which its 626 MEPs do their work has surfaced once again.

This time the debate has been fuelled by a draft Court of Auditors' report on the procedures followed when the Parliament signed the lease on a new complex now being built in Strasbourg to replace the existing hemicycle on the opposite banks of the River Ill.

The report is a damning indictment of the way political expediency was given precedence over sound financial management in the rush to sign the contract for the 443-million-ecu building.

Egon Klepsch, president of the Parliament at the time when the deal was struck in March 1994, put his signature to the document despite warnings from the Parliament's financial controller that the contract “should not be signed in its current form”.

He did so because he was being held to ransom by the then French government, which threatened not to ratify an agreement reached at the 1992 Edinburgh summit to increase the number of Euro MPs from 518 to 567 in time for the 1994 Euro elections if the deadline set by Paris for agreement on the contract was not met.

Some Euro MPs argued then that the Parliament should not give way to French 'blackmail', expressing strong misgivings over the way the whole issue had been handled.

Their concerns have been vindicated by the auditors' draft report, although the financial watchdog concludes that the Parliament has no option but to abide by the terms of the contract, despite the huge additional burden it will place on resources.

The episode will do nothing to boost the public's confidence in the way the EU manages its finances.

It will also raise question-marks over MEPs' ability to perform the enhanced role they were given by the Maastricht Treaty to oversee the way taxpayers' money is spent.

Once again, the EU's itinerant lifestyle - with meetings of the Council of Ministers in Brussels, Luxembourg and the country holding the EU presidency, and parliamentary sessions in Brussels and Strasbourg - has been thrown under the spotlight.

Taxpayers will understandably ask why a new building is needed in Strasbourg at all, when a building big enough to cater for MEPs' needs has already been built in Brussels.

National pride and the rich rewards to be reaped from playing host to EU institutions make this a most difficult conundrum for governments to solve.

But even those who argue in favour of keeping the Parliament in Strasbourg must surely recognise that this saga has not helped their cause one iota.