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Can 1m people stop the gravy train?

As another trek to Strasbourg begins, nigel horne reports on a petition to halt the monthly ritual

A member of the European Parliament has launched an online petition in an effort to end the so-called 'Strasbourg circus' - the monthly ritual whereby all 732 MEPs, accompanied by truckloads of paperwork and planeloads of assistants, decamp from Brussels to Strasbourg for just four days' work.

Cecilia Malmstrom (right), a Swedish Liberal, is seeking a million signatures from EU citizens to her petition. She believes that with such a number, the Strasbourg farce - protected by various treaties down the years - will finally have to be re-addressed.

If the response from readers of The First Post to our April 26 article about the trek is anything to go by, she'll have her million signatures in days not weeks.

Your emails have ranged from outrage to bemusement. How could anything quite so mad have been allowed to continue for so
How could anything quite so mad have been allowed to continue for so many years?

many years? Especially when - at a conservative estimate - two-thirds of all MEPs find it a waste of time and money.

It is the sheer waste of public money that Malmstrom believes will attract signatures to her petition. It costs European taxpapers more than 200 million euros a year to fund the Strasbourg circus.

On a second front, MEPs who oppose the monthly trek received a setback yesterday. They had been hoping that a rent scandal involving the city of Strasbourg, which came to light last month, might finally give them the ammunition they need.

As reported by The First Post, Strasbourg has for some 20 years been sub-letting two buildings to the EU and pocketing at least one million euros a year from the rent.

This Monday, the Mayor of Strasbourg, Fabienne Keller, was due to appear before the EU's Budgetary Control Committee to explain the over-charging. But yesterday afternoon the meeting appeared to have been hijacked by higher powers after the French prime minister intervened.