Strasbourg, 09/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - UDF MEP Jean-Louis Bourlanges outlined his views on the EP's place of work and Strasbourg sessions to reporters on Tuesday. The EP being based in several locations is written into the Treaty so it makes no sense to criticise the administration for expenditure caused by respecting the Treaties, but he understands the logic of people who want a single place of work, stressing that this would mean changing the Treaties.
The decision to scrap the Friday morning sitting was taken by the EP itself and Bourlanges called for it to be re-introduced for organisational motives (so many votes on Thursday "penalised" the quality of the EP's work); democracy (Strasbourg sessions are preceded by a week of meetings of the groups, rather than meetings of only an hour before mini-sessions in Brussels, that the backbenchers put up with, said Bourlanges) and also for budgetary reasons. When Bourlanges asked the EP Secretary General Julian Priestley on Friday morning about the savings to be made by scrapping the Friday morning sitting, the latter revealed that few savings would be made due to an increased use of freelance interpreters. In an amendment to the Virrankoski report on the EP's budgetary discharge (EUROPE will return to this), Bourlanges notes that scrapping the Friday sessions would actually lead to a sharp (16%) rise in the average daily cost of a session (seven half-days cost as much as eight).