Strasbourg, 13/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - In Strasbourg on Tuesday, the European Parliament decided by an overwhelming majority (551 votes against 80 and 7 abstentions) to give its president discharge on the execution of the 2003 budget, welcoming a very high level of budgetary execution, as in previous financial years. In its adoption of the report by Ona Jukneviciene (ALDE, Lithuania) accompanying this decision, the EP is refusing to create controversy about its seat, contenting itself with pointing out that “the fact that there is no single place of work entails considerable additional costs for the Parliament's budget”. The cost incurred by the fact that the European Parliament sits in three different countries “is put at over 200 million EUR a year”, the MEPs state (500 million EUR according to FDP member Alexander Alvaro, who is campaigning for all sessions to be transferred gradually to Brussels). Catherine Trautmann (PES, France) welcomed the fact that “recurrent attacks on the Strasbourg seat of the European Parliament have been repulsed”. She feels that “the price of democracy has a cost. The cost is the price to be paid due to the fact that the European Parliament sits in three countries. Strasbourg, which was enshrined as a seat in the Treaty of Amsterdam, is a vehicle for our values and represents the expression of a decentralised Europe”. Although the report notes that “Brussels would be the most logical place for a single seat” (EUROPE 8912), this comment was deleted at the final vote, as was one affirming the EP's right to decide on its own seat.
On MEPs' salaries, the EP supports the initiative taken by the Luxembourg Presidency with a view to an agreement on the status of MEPs, providing for all MEPs to receive the same salary. In this context, the Parliament raised the issue of the “gap between MEPs' salaries, which has been growing wider since enlargement, and the urgent need to find a solution guaranteeing fair treatment for all MEPs, respecting their national legislations and provisions”. However, the EP feels that even without a common status, it should be possible to design a transparent and fair system. It adds that the adoption of this common status would involve the implementation of an identical pension scheme for all MEPs and would put an end to any contribution from the EP budget to a voluntary pension scheme.
The MEPs urge the Bureau of the EP to take all necessary steps to “speed up the recruitment of linguistic staff in order to guarantee the right of each MEP to speak his or her mother tongue, by offering an interpretation service from and into all languages”. The MEPs spoke out against the lack of clarity in the mechanism governing social security provision applicable to parliamentary assistants and described as unacceptable the fact that smoking is allowed in Parliament buildings. They call for urgent measures against smoking and call upon the quaestors to designate a clearly defined and well-aired smoking area.