It’s every MEP’s nightmare. It’s every MEP’s assistant’s worst nightmare. It makes the European Parliament horribly inefficient, and it costs European taxpayers a load of cash. Oh, and it keeps the hotel and restaurant business in a certain part of France very happy. I am of course talking of Strasbourg, the official seat of the European Parliament but the place where MEPs are only 4 days every month.

A group of MEPs – the Campaign for Parliament Reform – has long criticised the monthly move to Strasbourg, and today efforts to get a single seat have received some useful backing: Martin Schultz, the leader of the Socialist Group, has stated the problems with having 2 seats for the EP (see this news from EUObserver). Now, that does not answer the question of whether the seat should be Brussels or Strasbourg (with Brussels being inherently the more sensible option), but it seems that the question of the EP’s location might start to be up for discussion.