Sign up to end EU waste

Date article online: 23/05/2006

People from Rochdale are being urged to add their name to a petition of one million signatures calling for an end to the monthly waste of taxpayers' money in Europe.

Local Euro-MP Chris Davies wants the British Government to bring an end to the monthly movement of the European parliament between Brussels and the French city of Strasbourg.

He says the second parliament building is used by MEPs for only 4 days each month and stands empty for more than 300 days each year.  It costs European taxpayers £100 million each year to pay for the building and to move around 3,000 staff and officials each month.

The Liberal Democrat MEP is urging people sign add their voice to a new campaign for reform at www.oneseat.eu

Mr Davies has just returned from this month's parliamentary session in Strasbourg.  The MEP made his regular 14 hour return journey from his North West home, to be joined from Brussels by an assistant and a trunk full of documents and equipment.

But Euro-MPs have no power to end what he describes as the travelling circus because the arrangements for the parliament to meet in Strasbourg twelve times a year have been agreed by EU governments and ratified by the British parliament.  Conservative Prime Minister John Major negotiated the current arrangements.

Mr Davies said: "Euro-MPs now have more influence over the making of many laws than backbench domestic MPs at Westminster, and the powers of the European Parliament are growing all the time.  Yet the despite the fact that a huge majority of MEPs want to change the ridiculous travel arrangements we are forced to continue because the prime minister has not pushed for change.

"It is ridiculous that taxpayers' money should be wasted by having two separate places to meet when we have a perfectly good parliament building in Brussels at the heart of the European institutions."

The Euro-MP says that a possible compromise to compensate French dignity would be to use the Strasbourg building to host the meetings of European prime ministers that take place every three months.

"Architecturally the second parliament is a wonderful place, but quite frankly Tony Blair is welcome to it!" he said.

Strasbourg sits astride the border between France and Germany and is regarded as a symbol of peace within a once war-torn continent.  The current arrangements for the parliament date from a treaty agreed between prime ministers in 1992 at a meeting in Edinburgh.