Brighton MP calls on EU to scrap the ‘Strasbourg circus’

A Brighton MP has called on the European Parliament to stop holding meetings in Strasbourg.

Conservative MP Simon Kirby said that the “Strasbourg circus” costs the taxpayer millions of pounds a year and wastes 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The Brighton Kemptown MP said: “According to the EU treaties, Strasbourg is the official seat of the European Parliament.

“Yet for most of the year the Parliament meets in Brussels, where the other main EU institutions are also based.

“So once a month, thousands of people have to decamp to Strasbourg: MEPs, their staff, civil servants, government representatives and diplomats.

“Numerous lorries are stacked up with office documents to be transported hundreds of miles to France, and this is despite the presence of an identical debating chamber in Brussels.”

Mr Kirby has now joined the “Stop the Strasbourg Circus” campaign and is calling on the coalition government to put an end to what he described as “this massive waste of money”.

Simon Kirby

He said: “The Prime Minister will shortly be participating in budget discussions with other EU heads of states on the content of the next seven-year EU budget deal.

“Scrapping the Strasbourg circus will save over £1 billion as part of this deal.

“Rather than the EU constantly calling for money, they should be using the money they have to better effect.

“They can do more with less so long as they concentrate on what is important like trade, research and jobs, rather than frittering it away on pointless vanity projects.

“I know that this government, and our Prime Minister, fight hard for the British taxpayer. He stood up to Brussels last December and it is time to do it again.

“I hope readers will join the campaign and sign the petition at www.stopthestrasbourgcircus.com.”

His call echoes comments made by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, in 2007 when she was an MEP for South East England.

Dr Lucas said at the time that the European Parliament’s “travelling circus” emitted more CO2 than some nations.

She said: “It is simply unacceptable that so much CO2 is being emitted completely unnecessarily – and €200m euros is being wasted every year – on this anachronistic travelling circus.”

She published a report called European Parliament two-seat operation: Environmental costs, transport and energy with fellow Green MEP Jean Lambert in Strasbourg.

They relied on evidence compiled by John Whitelegg, professor of sustainable transport at the Stockholm Environment Institute at York University.

He found that scrapping the monthly Strasbourg meetings would cut the need at a stroke for 2,650 offices, a debating chamber and nearly 50 conference rooms, most with full translation facilities.

And it would end the monthly trips by 2,000 parliamentary staff and interpreters, nearly 1,000 assistants, journalists and lobbyists and 785 MEPs with 15 lorry-loads of trunks and documents.

Dr Lucas said: “Strasbourg is an important city symbolising the peace between France and Germany but this symbolism alone is recklessly hastening climate change, costing literally billions and unnecessarily increasing the workload of MEPs and their staff.

“The EU itself must exercise some environmental leadership and end the two-seat arrangement immediately.”

In 2006 Dr Lucas joined more than a million people from around the EU in signing a petition calling for the two-seat arrangement to be scrapped.