The current, two-seat situation is deeply unpopular with most MEPs. | PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP/Getty Images Strasbourg strikes back New campaign aims to make French city the European Parliament’s sole seat.

When most members of the European Parliament say the assembly needs a "single seat," they're usually talking about Brussels, and arguing that it makes no sense to travel to Strasbourg for just four days of voting and debating per month.

Now a group of politicians are turning that argument on its head with a campaign to make Strasbourg the Parliament's sole headquarters. They are undaunted by arguments that the Parliament's trips to Strasbourg are a waste of money, time and energy.

And they see a potential weakness in the argument that Brussels should be the Parliament's single seat: the revelation last month that the assembly's Brussels headquarters building is badly in need of repairs.

Later this month a task force of about 20 French MEPs and other officials will launch “Strasbourg — The Seat” in a bid move the European Parliament to the Alsatian city for good.

The woman behind the campaign is Catherine Trautmann, a former French MEP and ex-mayor of Strasbourg, who is convinced that moving the headquarters and staff to her city will result in a “change of governance” in the European Parliament.

“It is time now to give a political dimension to the seat question,” Trautmann said in an interview, “because today many people question the objectives, the efficiency and the interests of these European institutions.”

According to the somewhat confusing language of the EU treaties, Strasbourg is the official seat of the European Parliament, but Brussels is home to most of its permanent staff and committees and hosts several plenary sessions a year. The dual citizenship means that up to 10,000 people must travel 12 times a year from Brussels to Strasbourg to debate and vote on legislation.

The current, two-seat situation is deeply unpopular with most MEPs and has spurred several efforts to end it.

Parliamentarians complain that long travel times to Strasbourg — more than five hours by train from Brussels and often several flight connections from their constituencies — are wasteful and expensive. The additional cost to the EU of maintaining two parliamentary seats — one of which sits empty most of the time — is estimated at an €180 million per year.

Bureaucratic and opaque

The European public seems to agree. In 2007, an online petition for a single seat for the European Parliament in Brussels gathered 1.27 million signatures from EU citizens.

Trautmann is undaunted, and said she would unveil an entire “plan of action” on October 21 to abandon Brussels, which she calls a haven for “bureaucracy” and “opacity.”

“The goal is not to transfer but to transform the Parliament,” said Daniel Guéguen, a Brussels lobbyist and member of the task force.

“It is about making the European Parliament less costly, less polluting, and more efficient" — Anna Maria Corazza-Bildt, MEP.

Guéguen said one benefit of a parliamentary move away from Brussels would be to break from practices such as “trilogues,” in which representatives of the three major European institutions — the Commission, Council and Parliament — gather behind closed doors to discuss and agree on legislation.

He added that making Strasbourg the official seat and headquarters would not require a treaty change, as Strasbourg is already enshrined in that document as the official seat.

Anna Maria Corazza-Bildt, a Swedish MEP, who heads the Single Seat campaign in favor of abandoning Strasbourg for Brussels, said the issue was not about choosing one city over the other. “It is about making the European Parliament less costly, less polluting, and more efficient," she said. "Our goal is to find a solution which benefits all.”

France is determined to keep Strasbourg, and as long as it keeps that position, a treaty change allowing a single seat would be impossible.

French President François Hollande said earlier this year as he signed new agreements providing close to €1 billion to the city and the region that “Never will France authorize any modification of any kind” to the city's status as the Parliament's seat.

The pro-Strasbourg forces got a boost last week when a group of 16 MEPs from the European People’s Party, including some from outside of France, wrote Parliament President Martin Schulz asking him to move all the plenary sessions from Brussels to Strasbourg in order to “optimize the use of our existing premises.”

The MEPs' letter suggested that due to planned upcoming renovation works at the Parliament in Brussels, the assembly should eliminate around 10 plenary sessions a year it holds in Brussels and lengthen the Strasbourg sessions.

The MEPs said in the letter that last week's high-profile political appearance in the Parliament by Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel should encourage people to favor the Strasbourg seat.

“It shows the importance of going back to the historical roots of the European construction, embodied by the Alsatian city, to find ambitious solutions to the current challenges,” they wrote.

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