International

SP member of Parliament Harry van Bommel’s call for an end to the European Parliament’s wholesale monthly transferral to Strasbourg has found support from within the EP itself. A petition calling for an end to this waste of money, at www.oneseat.eu, a website set up by Swedish Euro-MP Cecilia Malmström, has attracted signatures from 280,000 citizens of different EU member states within days of its opening. “Hopefully we’ll at last see an end to this ridiculous state of affairs,” Mr Van Bommel said.

Because the European Parliament has two meeting places, hundreds of Euro-MPs, their assistants, parliamentary officials, translators and journalists, accompanied by tens of thousands of boxes full of documents are forced to migrate hundreds of miles every month between Brussels and Strasbourg. One of the reasons that the SP campaigned against the European constitution was its failure to propose that this wasteful procedure be ended and a single seat named. The costs of this monthly re-housing amount to hundreds of millions of euros per year. “It’s typical of the waste involved in European parliamentary politics as well as of the institution’s impotence,” Van Bommel said. “The SP has called for years for an end to this circus. We hope that in the face of this level of public support a solution will now be found.”

www.oneseat.eu