IRISH MEPS HAVE raised concerns about the environmental and monetary cost of having the European Parliament based in two different cities, with one calling it a “preposterous waste of money”.
Grace O’Sullivan and Ciaran Cuffe of the Green Party and Clare Daly of Independents4Change have both raised concerns about the movement of Parliament staff and representatives between Brussels and Strasbourg each month.
Independent studies in 2014 showed that a total of €109 million a year would be saved if the European Parliament opted to transfer all operations to Brussels for good.
The parliament itself is moved on a monthly basis due to an EU treaty in 1992, which made Strasbourg the official seat of the European Parliament.
This meant that plenary sessions would be held in Strasbourg, France while parliamentary committees were held in Brussels, Belgium.
This was changed in 2020 due to the pandemic, with then-European Parliament President David Sassoli cancelling all sessions in Strasbourg and moving all activity to Brussels.
The parliament then returned to Strasbourg in June 2021, with remote voting and hybrid systems in place to allow MEPs work without being in attendance in the city.
Daly – who raised the issue in a survey from The Good Information Project sent to all 13 Irish MEPs – said that the monthly moving of the parliament should be stopped by the EU, saying that it was a “preposterous waste of money” and bad for the environment.
“People at home don’t realise that every month the Parliament ups and moves from Brussels to Strasbourg to have a week of plenary meetings, and then it comes back at the end of the week to resume its normal work,” said Daly in an answer to one of our survey’s questions.
“700 MEPs, their staff, the Parliament’s staff, the Commissioners, thousands of people in all, all moving for no good reason to another city.
Travel costs, accommodation costs, subsistence costs, the cost of running two massive parliament buildings in two different cities even though only one of them is in use at any given time – all paid for by citizens.
“It’s a preposterous waste of money, and extremely bad for the environment. It should be stopped.”
The creation of Strasbourg as the official seat of the European Parliament in 1992, as the Parliament’s own information service notes, “formalised a situation that already existed at the time and which reflected compromises arrived at over a number of years”.
Historical compromise
Historically, the Council of Europe, which focused on cultural and human rights issues post World War II, was based in Strasbourg. Early plenary meetings of the European Coal and Steel Community’s ‘Common Assembly’ (which eventually morphed into the European Parliament) were also held there but over time, more of the Parliament’s work moved to Brussels, leading to the bi-location observed today.
“By the early nineties, the present arrangement was more or less in place, with committees and political groups meeting in Brussels and the main plenary sessions taking place in Strasbourg. A major part of Parliament’s staff is based in Luxembourg,” the Parliament site notes.
Grace O’Sullivan told The Journal that she had requested to keep hybrid working until the end of 2022 and called the system of moving between the two cities “totally inefficient”.
“I requested that we could hybrid meet until the end of this year. I’m a single parent, I have a daughter who has a moderate to profound intellectual disability, it’s a massive challenge for me to be here,” said O’Sullivan.
I will be perfectly honest, I can’t stand having to travel here by air. The travel, for me, is a terrible environmental cost… It’s totally inefficient.
O’Sullivan added that the extra travel made it difficult on her family, saying that she could be travelling for 16 hours a week.
“Sometimes that travel will be on a Sunday, so that means leaving home, having breakfast with the family and then heading off at lunchtime.”
O’Sullivan said that the EU needed to work in line with the European Green Deal and use systems that do not damage the environment as much.
Keeping the peace
Ciaran Cuffe, Green Party MEP, did note that Strasbourg had played an important role in keeping peace between France and Germany.
“I think the most enduring success of the European Union project has been peace within the Member States and peace between France and Germany, and I think Strasbourg has a special place in maintaining that,” said Cuffe.
However, he added that the parliament should consider retaining hybrid working methods to reduce the amount of MEPs travelling between cities on a regular basis.
“I think we should look at maintaining hybrid working and rethinking our working methods so as to reduce the amount of weekly flying by many MEPs.”
This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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