Strasbourg Parliament is pointless

Does the European Union really need 3 parliaments or is taxpayers' money being squandered? According to David Petrie the Strasbourg Parliament should be closed down and converted to a European centre for excellence

Europhiles are still licking their wounds after the much vaunted European  Constitution and its Charter of Fundamental Rights got the thumbs down in the recent referendums by the peoples of France and the Netherlands. Little comfort will be had from  the 200,000 population of Luxembourg’s ‘yes’ vote of 56.5%;  the richest of all of the 25 European Union (EU) member states, it  receives  per head of population more money then any of the other 24. Even here, a tiny country voted ‘yes’ by a tiny majority.

The British government says the Constitution is “on ice” whilst the media is awash with metaphors such as  the emperor has no clothes, a dead duck and the genie is out of the bottle. Not quite able to criticise the will of the peoples or contemplate advocating a new referendum after the people have been re-educated, the Europhiles are in depression. Some are blaming the low turn out at referendums and European Parliamentary elections on national politicians and the media – the buzz words are “democratic deficit”.

Let’s face it, how many people on a Ryan Air flight from Berlin to Birmingham would know a democratic deficit from a badger’s bum?  And why would they? But they know the benefits of Ryan Air all right.

Like it or not the public is largely indifferent to the workings of the institutions of the EU.  If asked in a local pub quiz “where is the European Parliament based?” most people, understandably, would be confused. It’s a trick question, because it’s in 3 places; the official seat is in Strasbourg (so that gets the point in the pub quiz) but most of the work gets done in Brussels, while the Secretariat is in Luxembourg, where the EU’s European Court of Justice sits, not to be confused with the European Court of Human Rights which sits in Strasbourg next to the Parliament but whose jurisdiction is different from and wider than the territories of the EU.

Many European citizens, in so far as they are interested at all, see the EU as a vast sprawling self-serving bureaucracy. Often unfairly, the 732 directly elected members of the Parliament are seen as money grabbing fat cats, unfairly because those who do take the job seriously work to a gruelling schedule and many are paid modest salaries.  Italian deputies, the highest paid of all, receive 3 times the salary of their Spanish colleagues. They often a have a double mandate, having a seat in Rome. Absenteeism at voting time in the Strasbourg plenary and the Brussels mini-plenary is rife, yet the Italian public consistently says ‘yes’ to Europe. So how do we label this phenomenon? A reverse democratic deficit?

The problem with ‘yes’ to the Constitution is that people are sceptical of the benefits, which seem intangible while they fear more layers of  faceless bureaucracy, remote from their daily lives, multiplied for the sake of multiplication. The Europhiles now find themselves marooned in a sea of paper; documents, treaties, resolutions, charters, questionnaires, you name it. The ‘no’ vote renders them rather like those Walt Disney cartoon characters who can walk on thin air so long as they don’t notice it, once they realise it, once they experience that they are out of tune with everyone else’s perceptions they fall, as they were bound to do.

The Europhiles should be celebrating the rejection of the constitution as a wake up call for it shows that people don’t believe, rightly or wrongly, that the EU can improve the quality of their lives. The Union is perceived of as a huge self-serving white elephant. If it is to gain the confidence of the European people, bold acts of imagination will be required.

One such act, first suggested by the former British Conservative MEP, Roy Perry, would be to close down the European Parliament building in Strasbourg and turn it into a European University.

It is often argued that thanks to the EU, peace has been maintained in Europe since 1945, and that the site of the Parliament in Strasbourg, in Alsace, a cannon ball shot from the German border, is the symbol of that peace.  

This argument, unfortunately, is not susceptible to proof, and could merely be a post hoc ergo proptor hoc. It ignores other possibly more important factors, such as the Cold War. The argument is, in any case, becoming too remote from Europe’s youth to be attractive. In any event, wouldn’t a European University, or a Study Centre for European  Excellence open up to EU students and workers an extension or development of this symbol of peace and co-operation?

Members of the European Parliament have offices and lodgings in both Brussels and Strasbourg. For a mere 48 days of the year the Parliament sits in Strasbourg. Truck loads of documents are transferred back and forward from Brussels and nothing much gets done on a Monday as deputies and their assistants settle in. This needlessly wasteful arrangement is estimated to consume between 15% and 20% of the Parliament’s 1,272 million euro annual budget, costing the taxpayer at least an extra 200 million euros per year. Scandalous.

Turning the Strasbourg building into a Study Centre for European Excellence would require minimal adjustments. The offices of each member are very modest in size, with a shower, wc, desk and a single bed – ideal as student residences. There are any number of rooms that can be used for teaching. The debating chamber with its interpreters’ booths could continue to be put to good use.

A Study Centre for European Excellence would offer opportunities to talented people, thwarted by lack of opportunity in their own countries, to study, teach and further their careers in a meritocratic atmosphere, judged by their European peers. Of course, this would mean that these talented people would need to migrate, at least temporarily. This is already happening in places like Italy where the much discussed “brain drain” is a direct result of Italian universities being so deeply infected with corruption. Silvio Berlusconi’s government will be unable to reform Italy’s universities despite some moves in the right direction.

Note: This article was first published by JUST Response on July 11 2005. David Petrie is chairman of the ALLSI foreign language lecturers' association based in Verona, Italy.

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