EU REFORM

by RAY FLEMING
MARGOT Wallstrom, the Swedish commissioner for communications in the EU's commission in Brussels, has the important but difficult job of making the EU more understandable to its citizens. She is showing signs of tackling it in a robust way. Instead of trying to defend the indefensible she is asking why aspects of the EU which clearly do not make sense to the general public cannot be reformed. The practice of the European Parliament holding its meetings in two locations, Brussels and Strasbourg, costs hundreds of millions of euros a year and leads to inevitable inefficiency. The parliamentary building in Strasbourg is empty for 307 days every year and Ms Wallstrom cannot see any way of persuading the general public that this is necessary, whatever good reasons may once have existed for the arrangement.
Her simple solution to the anomaly, therefore, is that the European Parliament should meet only in Brussels. This proposal will not be welcomed by France or by those MEPs who rather like the gravy train that travels between Brussels and Strasbourg. However Ms Wallstrom got welcome support on Monday when an online petition (oneseat.eu) calling for the change notched up its one millionth signature since it was launched last May.
It will take more than a citizen's petition to move the EU to abandon an arrangement which Margot Wallstrom has described as a "negative symbol of wasting money, bureaucracy and the insanity of Brussels institutions". But it's a start.