"Having a second parliamentary seat effectively means pouring millions of pounds paid by British taxpayers down the plughole and such nonsense destroys voters' trust in the EU"
Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, Vice-President of the European Parliament
The European Parliament is the only assembly in the world not to have a sole seat. Every month, thousands of people who work here uproot and travel 300 miles to the Strasbourg Parliament in France for four days. All of our paperwork is transported separately in crates. This so-called Strasbourg travelling circus costs British taxpayers alone around £140 million a year. The vast expense of shuttling between the two seats not only undermines the standing of this Parliament, but is also hastening climate change and making a mockery of EU efforts to cut CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, the target adopted in March 2007.
Conservative MEPs are at the forefront of the campaign to reform the EU. British taxpayers expect reform to begin by having one parliamentary seat in Brussels. More than one million European citizens have so far signed a petition calling for this change. The will of the people must be heard.
- Abolishing the 12 annual trips from Brussels would save British taxpayers around £140 million
- Two seat farce pumps 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into our atmosphere - equivalent to the CO2 produced each year by entire population of the Turks and Caicos Islands
- There is nothing in Strasbourg that we do not already have in Brussels
- Uprooting every month involves thousands of extra road, rail and plane journeys
Conservative MEPs have campaigned for many years to end the two-seat farce and will continue to strive to save the millions of pounds it costs the British taxpayer. As part of our campaigning on the new European treaty, we have been fighting to reopen the Inter-Governmental Conference agenda in order to finally deal with this issue. It can be addressed only by the IGC as the Strasbourg location is enshrined in the Amsterdam Treaty and change can only happen with the consent of all Member States. However, the British Government has said no.