MEPs demand one base ‘to save money’
Report says Parliament could save money if it had just one base.
MEPs have called for the European Parliament to stop meeting in both Brussels and Strasbourg, as a cost-saving measure. The call was included in a report accompanying the Parliament’s approval of its accounts on Tuesday (10 May). “Real savings could be achieved if Parliament only had one workplace,” the report said.
But MEPs from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) managed to muster enough support to vote down a demand that Jerzy Buzek, the Parliament president, raise the question of the Parliament’s place of work with member states.
The states decide on where the EU institutions should meet since it is a matter fixed by treaty. The EPP also managed to cut out a reference to the annual cost of travelling to Strasbourg from Brussels, which is €160 million per year, according to the Parliament.
This was not the first time that MEPs have called for an end to the arrangement by which the Parliament meets in both Strasbourg and Brussels and has many of its staff based in Luxembourg. But Ville Itälä, a Finnish centre-right MEP who drafted the report, said the call for a single base was “a first step” in improving the Parliament’s work, though he said it was for the member states themselves to change its working arrangements.
In a meeting with French MEPs on Tuesday before the vote, Laurent Wauquiez, France’s minister for European affairs, said France would block any attempt to stop the Parliament meeting in Strasbourg. The French government would work to improve transport links for MEPs and staff, he pledged.
2009 accounts
The workplace issue was part of the Parliament’s review of its own 2009 accounts, which also called for additional savings to its own administrative spending. Proposals included limiting interpretation services for committees and working group meetings to only six languages – English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish. Other languages should be made available only if MEPs requested them prior to meetings, the report said.
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The Parliament this week also approved the 2009 accounts of the European Union budget administered by the European Commission. The endorsement came after MEPs won commitments from the Commission to improve the management and control of EU funds spent by member states – included regional aid and agricultural aid. The Parliament called on member states to sign “national management declarations” (NMDs) accepting responsibility for the way that EU money is spent in their countries.
MEPs have since 2005 demanded that the Commission present a proposal to introduce mandatory NMDs and reiterated their call in this year’s discharge report that the Commission present a proposal “for the introduction of mandatory NMDs duly signed by each national finance minister”.
Only Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden currently provide NMDs to the Commission.
But the Parliament decided to postpone until the autumn any approval for the accounts of the Council of Ministers administrative budget for 2009. It approved a resolution demanding closer co-operation from the Council, and more information over how funds were spent in foreign and security policy, to permit MEPs to review fully how money is spent. The Council has refused to hand over such information, pointing to a 40-year-old ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ between the two institutions under which Parliament and Council agreed not to scrutinise each other’s administrative budgets.
The Parliament also deferred two other account reviews. MEPs postponed signing off the 2009 accounts of the European Medicines Agency and the European Police College because of concerns about independence of staff and management procedures. The two agencies have been given until 30 June to respond to questions over their management.