Will Strasbourg become Sciencebourg?

Date: 04/05/06

The recent revelations that the city of Strasbourg may have been overcharging the European Parliament for renting two buildings in the Alsatian capital have fuelled renewed debate about whether MEPs should continue to meet there at the cost of EUR 200 million a year.

This week Martin Schulz, the Socialist group leader,invited Parliament President Josep Borrell to ask EU leaders if they would consider changing the commitments in the treaty which keep the Parliament in Strasbourg.

For reform-minded MEPs such as German Liberal Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, the implications of the news about the overcharging are clear. "This spurs the campaign in favour of the Parliament giving up its second site in Strasbourg," he said last week. He pointed out that even German MEPs who were traditionally strong supporters of staying in Strasbourg, not least because of the city's symbolic value as a sign of Franco-German reconciliation, were starting to think the previously unthinkable. Hartmut Nassauer, a leading German centre-right member, said that Parliament's sessions should concentrate in Brussels in future.

Chatzimarkakis, a member of the industry and research committee, had been pushing the idea of offering France the planned European Institute of Technology (EIT) to replace the financial benefits and prestige that Strasbourg enjoys from hosting the Parliament.

"Within one week support of the EIT as a replacement has grown," he said.

The proposal for an EIT was floated by the European Commission in February. Its aim would be to link academics, researchers and the private sector to boost the EU's research efforts.

Chatzimarkakis said that Strasbourg could also host the European Research Council, which will manage EUR 7 billion in funds for pioneering research in 2007-13. "Strasbourg could become Sciencebourg," he said.

But French MEPs contested Chatzimarkakis's view. French Green member G�rd Onesta, who is in charge of the Parliament's buildings policy, played down suggestions that the news about the excessive rent would spark a new wave of opposition to the Parliament staying in Strasbourg, saying: "No one is going to change their minds."

French centre-right MEP Joseph Daul, a Strasbourg native, insisted that the home of the Parliament could only be changed by unanimity, although he expected that the "anti-Strasbourgers would pick up the flame" of opposition, after the news about problems with the building came to light.

Chatzimarkakis believed that French presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy was open to allowing the Parliament to leave Strasbourg. He pointed to a paper drawn up in January 2006 by the Fondation pour l'Innovation Politique, the think-tank of Sarkozy's UMP party, which calls for Strasbourg to become the home of a European university. The paper, co-written by Polish MEP Bronislaw Geremek , says that it would be "better for the functioning of Europe if MEPs spent most of their time in Brussels". In exchange, Strasbourg could become the "intellectual capital of Europe". But Sarkozy has told Daul that he would "not budge on [having] the seat in Strasbourg" and promised to defend it "even more strongly".

In the absence of any progress on the issue of Strasbourg, Chatzimarkakis warned that MEPs may vote with their feet and start refusing to go to Strasbourg for sessions.

But such a move would have legal implications. According to EU law, procedural faults, relating, for instance, to the composition of an institution or its seat, lead to the nullification of the laws it adopts. Consequently, the French government, or any other government, as well as EU institutions or companies, could challenge the laws adopted by Parliament in illegal plenary session in Brussels.

The ultimate decision lies in the hands of EU leaders. They would have to undo the 1997 commitment in the Treaty of Amsterdam that Strasbourg is one of two sites of the Parliament. It is therefore extremely unlikely that MEPs' views will prevail, even if there was sufficient support for drastic steps.

If the Parliament were to end its travelling circus to Strasbourg, it would only do so as part of a far wider deal reached by EU leaders whenever the next intergovernmental conference meets to settle institutional changes for the Union's future. And nothing will move before next year's presidential elections in France.

Article on suggestions from MEPs that the recent debate on rental deals for European Parliament buildings in Strasbourg could reinforce the debate on whether Strasbourg should be kept as one of Parliament's two seats. Ideas were floated that the French city could receive the proposed European Institute of Technology in exchange for giving up the European Parliament. Author suggests that any such decision was not likely to be taken in the near future.

• Primary Source