Brussels, 17/03/2004 (Agence Europe) - The budgetary control committee of the European Parliament decided on 16 March by 16 votes for and 2 against for Brussels to become the permanent home for Parliament. While adopting the report of Dutch Socialist, Michiel van Hulten on the European Commission discharge for the execution of the 2002 budget, the parliamentary committee pointed out that most of the MEPs' activities take place in Brussels. The Commission noted that the cost of maintaining three workplaces of the parliament (Strasbourg for most plenaries, Brussels for some mini-sessions, as well as most committee meetings and hearings, Luxembourg too, increasingly sporadically: Editor's note) in an enlarged Union of 25 Member States, would cost more than EUR 200 million a year. MEPs are calling on President Cox to send this message to the intergovernmental conference so that the Articles in the treaty on this subject can be amended. They also suggest finding alternative solutions to the EP buildings in Strasbourg to be able, for example, to seat the "first genuinely pan-European university", indicates a press statement.
The report is also highlighting the travel expenses for MEPs to based on real costs and is of the opinion that the council's inability to approve the status of MEPs does not "discharge the Parliament of its responsibility for ensuring that EU funds are spent in an honest and transparent manner". The report also calls for Parliament to ensure that the envisaged restrictions in several current EU Member States on the movement of workers from future Member States does not prevent MEPs in these new Member States from employing assistants from their home countries.