International

The cases are packed: the travelling circus hits the road once more, and for the second time in a month. Last year the European Parliament decided to run the two September Strasbourg sessions into each other to have at least one less trip to make. France wasn’t happy with this and fought the decision at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg. Luxembourg supported the French line, while the other member states, including the Netherlands, decided to say nothing in support of the EP. This is what happens time after time. In their own country Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his government are busy cutting everything and anything with a blunt axe, but in Brussels chance after chance to clamp down on unnecessary spending goes begging.

Last year, along with a number of like-minded MEPs, I realised that, while the Treaty does indeed say that we must hold twelve sessions a year in Strasbourg, it says nothing about the length of these sessions. You can therefore begin a session on Monday, end it Tuesday, then hold a second session on Thursday and Friday of the same week. In September two sessions must be held, because the EP does not meet in August. And so we will all still have to head down to Strasbourg twice in a month. The proposal for two sessions in a single week was supported by the majority in the EP, and would have meant that we would in the future have to go to Strasbourg only once, just as in other months.

France reacted angrily to this. In their view, the EP’s actions were in conflict with the Treaty. We’ll see what the ECJ says. It is, however, pathetic that the EP got no support whatsoever from the member states, any of whom could have weighed in on behalf of the Parliament. Even the Netherlands failed to do so. Rutte thereby confirmed that he isn’t really interested in putting an end to the travelling circus. And the PVV? The populist right-wing party which has always been so angry about the travelling circus? As usual, they found Rutte’s performance perfectly satisfactory. Whatever else, the governing parties and the right-wingers who keep them in power have lost credibility in this area. In any case, their plans for the coming year, debated in the Dutch Parliament last week, have already left them with little enough credibility.