EU

Auditors estimate €2.5 billion could be saved over 50 years by removing Strasbourg Parliament

Published

12 years ago

August 8, 2014

A new report by the European Court of Auditors says that the cost of moving the European Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg every month amounts to €114 million a year, or 6% of the institution’s administrative budget.

Members of the European Parliament, their staff and tones of documents regularly move between Brussels, which hosts committee meetings and Strasbourg, where plenary sessions are held each month. Luxembourg, meanwhile, houses the Parliament's administrative offices.

The Luxembourg-based auditors have now calculated that some €2.5 billion could be saved over the next 50 years, or €113.8m per year, if the Strasbourg seat was scrapped and MEPs met only in Brussels. The report, which was commissioned by the Parliament itself, showed that moving all employees from Luxembourg to Brussels alone would save €80m over the next half century.

The Court’s estimates are higher than previous costings for what is known as the ‘Strasbourg travelling circus.’

The Strasbourg arrangement is justified as a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation after the Second World War.

Nick Clegg, the UK deputy prime minister, himself a former MEP, has said he wants an end to the "bonkers" split-site operation. The report is significant because it is believed to be the first ever independent analysis of the Parliament’s two-seat arrangement.

Any decision to scrap the arrangement would require an amendment to the EU treaties, a process which requires unanimity among all EU member states. But British MEP Philip Bradbourn, Conservative spokesman on budgetary control, said: "This is the most powerful evidence yet that the wasteful Strasbourg travelling circus must be scrapped – and the sooner the better. When the EU's own experts are saying this is financial madness, surely it is time to listen."

German centre right MEP Elmar Brok has suggested the Strasbourg site could be converted to an EU university as "compensation" to the Alsace region of France.

Rory Broomfield, director of the campaign group Better Off Out, said, “This report confirms that the EU's travelling circus is alive and well. Not content with creating extra amounts of regulation that cost businesses money, the EU is intent on needlessly spending taxpayer funds in a way that can only be described as a waste of time.”

Share this article: