Is this the end of the road for the €114m-a-year Strasbourg caravan?
by Orlando CrowcroftAn MEP has claimed to have come up with a solution to end the 'caravan', which sees the European Parliament move from Brussels to Strasbourg once every month at a cost of €114 million per year.
Nico Semsrott, an artist and MEP for the satirical Die Partei, says that while the Treaty of Amsterdam requires Strasbourg to be the seat of the European Parliament, it does not specify the city.
In a video posted to his YouTube account, Semsrott smashes a bottle of wine at the door of the hall of the parliament in Brussels and sticks a post-it note on the door, 'renaming' it Strasbourg.
As a result, Semsrott says, there is no longer any reason for 751 MEPs and their staff to move every month at such a monumental cost to the European taxpayer.
Watch the interview with Semsrott in the video player above.
Strasbourg became the seat of the European parliament in 1992, while Brussels was set as the venue for parliamentary committees and the parliament's staff would set based in Luxembourg.
Although the situation is unpopular with both the public and MEPs themselves, a change would require the unanimous vote of every member state, and would likely be vetoed by France.
The European Parliament in 2003 put the cost of the caravan at €103m, but the EU points out that 6% of the parliament's budget, 1% of the EU's administrative budget and just 0.1% of the total EU budget.