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Strasbourg, Brussels and Luxembourg – the European Parliament’s three workplaces

Institutions - 10-01-2006 - 12:49
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Luxembourg, Brussels and Strasbourg

3 sites - 1 institution

Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament, but most Parliamentary Committee activity takes place in Brussels, while its General Secretariat is based in Luxembourg. This situation was approved at the 1992 Edinburgh Summit and in the Treaty of Amsterdam (1999). Historical reasons lie behind this division, but in practical terms it is not always easy to manage.

If you want to meet an MEP at the European Parliament you should never forget to state clearly where you are going to meet. You might absent-mindedly set off for Parliament’s official seat at Strasbourg with the intention of meeting there, only to find that the person you want to meet is  waiting for you in Brussels (or vice versa). So why does the European Parliament divide its activities between three cities?
 
Back in 1951 all the institutions of the newly-established European Coal & Steel Community (ECSC) were to have been based in Brussels. It was the choice of all the founding members barring the then Prime Minister of Belgium, who is said to have favoured Liège. Unanimity was needed for decisions of this type and, in the absence of an agreement on Brussels, Luxembourg was chosen. This posed a problem for the ECSC’s Parliamentary Assembly, as there was no chamber big enough to accommodate its members. The nearest was the Council of Europe’s chamber in Strasbourg. So, from 1952 onwards, the Alsatian capital, symbol of Franco-German reconciliation, became the meeting place for the European parliamentarians’ plenary sittings.
 
But with the founding in 1957 of the EEC (the European Economic Community) - and as the Community’s activities increased in scope - a growing part of institutional activity headed towards Brussels. Financial and legal institutions, as well as the Court of Auditors, remained in Luxembourg, but the Belgian capital became the focal point for most of the activities of the European Commission and the Council. The Assembly, which became the European Parliament in March 1962, successively transferred its activities to Brussels. Following the January 1989 report by UK Conservative MEP, Derek Prag, the partial transfer towards Brussels was officially accepted. The aim was to rationalise Parliament’s workings and to bring it closer to the Commission and Council. Plenary sittings were still held in Strasbourg, but additional sittings could subsequently be held in Brussels. Parliament was thus spread over three workplaces, which remains the case today.
 
For years Belgium and France failed to agree on where the official seat should be sited. It was at the Edinburgh European Council in 1992 that an agreement was reached. Belgium accepted that Strasbourg would ultimately become the official seat, with twelve plenary sessions, provided that other activities (committee and political group meetings and supplementary sittings) were based in Brussels. This agreement was officially adopted in the Treaty of Amsterdam (which came into effect in 1999). Today, Parliament, with its 732 MEPs, no longer rents the auditorium of the Council of Europe, a body which has itself grown in size. It has its own two chambers for plenary sittings, one in Strasbourg and the other in Brussels, while its General Secretariat remains in Luxembourg.  Arguments about the choice of these sites resurface regularly due to the budgetary and practical consequences of this geographical split. However, any change requires unanimous agreement within the Council of Ministers.  
 
REF.: 20060110STO04172

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