End The Travelling Circus

12.00.00am GMT Tue 14th Mar 2000

MEPs yesterday (Thursday) sent a message to Tony Blair and leaders across Europe that they want the chance to save taxpayers £100 million each year by getting rid of one of the massive European Parliament buildings.

The move would end the 'travelling circus' in which European MEPs and more than 2,000 parliamentary staff are obliged to spend three weeks each month in Brussels and one week in Strasbourg, some 300 miles away.

A succession of treaties signed by Tony Blair and John Major, and endorsed by Westminster MPs, require the European Parliament to meet in Strasbourg twelve times each year. The legal requirement is so strong that MEPs have to visit the French city twice in October to make up for their single month of absence in August!

By 401 to 77 votes, MEPs today demanded the right for the European Parliament to decide for itself where it should meet. Given the chance, the result would almost certainly be to concentrate all its activities in Brussels, and for the brand new complex of buildings in Strasbourg to be handed back to the French authorities, saving taxpayers millions each year.

Leaders of all 15 EU nations will be asked to make the change when they meet in December at the Intergovernmental Conference in Nice.

Andrew Duff MEP, Liberal Democrat MEP for Eastern England, said that the change would save money and allow the European Parliament to become more effective.

He pointed out that the European Commission is based in Brussels, and the city is home to civil servants from employed by every EU government, and is the meeting place both for the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. Andrew Duff said: "Our job as MEPs is to improve legislation and hold the European Commission to account.

"Any objective observer will accept that the European Parliament is now more effective than ever before, but we will do a lot better if we stop having to pack our bags every three weeks in this ridiculous way.

"MEPs have done their bit by clearly showing that we want this arrangement changed. Now it is up to Tony Blair to insist that the European treaties are changed."