I’m delighted to hear my MEP Robert Sturdy speaking sound common sense and renewing calls to abolish the European Parliament sitting in Strasbourg following research which concluded that 70% of MEPs want to end their enforced visits there.
Robert has vigorously campaigned for 17 years against the present system of travelling from Brussels to France at least a dozen times a year to vote on legislation. We have issued a press release about this referring to a report called “A Tale of Two Cities†which said it cost an extra £150 million annually and resulted in an extra 19,000 tonnes of CO2 a year caused by road and air travel: using one seat instead of continuing the current travelling circus would also save UK taxpayers £28 million a year. Just imagine if MPs in Westminster had to do the same hear and travel to Scotland to vote, for example, accompanied by staff and office papers. We would be appalled!
Robert and fellow Conservative MEPs have consistently called for the Strasbourg sittings to be scrapped.
He said: “This latest study supports what Conservatives have long believed, that this travelling circus is very unpopular by the majority of MEPs and should be scrapped to save us millions of pounds, our time and carbon emissions. It’s a disgraceful waste on all counts and cannot be justified any longer. It is totally unacceptable and it should be acted on now following this report.
“While the Strasbourg seat was once a very positive symbol in reuniting France and Germany, it has now become a negative symbol of wasting money and bureaucracy and should cease being used.
“I find it hard to understand how the European Labour leader in Brussels, Martin Schultz, could dismiss the report as a ‘waste of time’, and I would like to challenge our local Labour MEP Richard Howitt to say if he shares his leader’s views too.â€
Last year Robert signed a cross-party letter urging the President of the European Union to end the Strasbourg sittings, and vowed he would never give up campaigning on this issue.
The full report can be found here. http://www.brusselsstrasbourgstudy.eu
i couldn’t believe my ears when i first heard those idiots actually travel between 2 towns on different weeks to do precisely the same job
why don’t they cut the crap and put the parliament in london, paris or berlin and have done with
i’m totally against political towns ie the biggest town is in one place and there’s some crap arse political city elsewhere i think we have the right idea with london the only thing wrong with london is the skyscrapers are shamefully tiny, defeating the whole object of a skyscraper: if we’re going to have buildings out of keeping with the character of the town, make ’em the tallest in the world and line ’em up like a curtain. it looks good
also the population of london is way too small we should have 50 million here so we can be the biggest city in the world. we already are far superior to anywhere else but need the massive buildings and impressive stats to back that up. also we should put far more energy into getting major films shot here, having multicoloured street lights so london looks cool from the air (not to mention on cab rides from nightclubs) and putting new york city categorically in the shameful second place it most definitely is to london
Hear, hear!