[PIC and PUB PLEASE]The farce of the EU travelling circus In all, the EU admits that the monthly Strasbourg sitting, which lasts just four days, costs an additional £93 million a year. The Conservative Party in Europe, which is leading a campaign to abandon it, estimates the cost a little higher at £130 million, or about £928 million in the seven-year cycle of an EU budget. Among the costs are £250,000 a year to transport the plastic boxes containing documents, diaries and other items from Brussels to Strasbourg and back again. The boxes are left outside offices in Brussels on a Friday evening, collected by a courier company and driven to Strasbourg, where they are unloaded and left outside offices there. The process is repeated in reverse on Thursday evening. It is thought it costs up to £200,000 for the EU to charter two express trains to take officials, MEPs and others there on a Monday morning and back on a Thursday afternoon. The trains stop only once at an airport in Paris to collect or drop MEPs and no ordinary member of the public can get on board, for a train which arrives in time for parliamentary sessions beginning in the afternoon. Many of the details are contained within a report into the "financial and environmental impact" of operating two parliaments, which was overseen by Klaus Welle, the secretary-general to the European Parliament, its top civil servant. Mr Welle had been requested by MEPs to give an accurate figure on the costs of two parliaments amid a growing clamour to scrap one of them. The report shows how taxpayers foot the £2.5 million bill for relocating freelance translators from Brussels to Strasbourg and back again, including costs of travel, accommodation and other expenses. Providing catering services in Strasbourg costs an additional £1 million, while extra medical support comes to some £330,000. In Strasbourg, extra money is needed for computers and IT support and for maintenance and security of the sleek parliament building, which was completed in 1999. In total, the cost of looking after the French buildings and infrastructure and other charges comes to about £50 million a year. One source suggested that before each session begins, a maintenance crew visits every bathroom and turns on and off every tap to make sure no pipes have been blocked since they were last used and to rid the pipes of stale water. A spokesman said that the maintenance teams looked after the building just like any other. About 100 people are employed in Strasbourg full-time, even though the European Parliament meets for 12 sessions, each lasting four days, a total of only 48 days each year. But during those four-day sessions, the circus is in town. About 5,500 people pour into Strasbourg; not only politicians and officials but lobbyists, too. Hotels in Strasbourg typically double their rates when the EU comes to stay. Last week, the Hilton Hotel in Strasbourg was offering rooms at £82 for Sunday night, but this rose to a cheapest rate of £161 a night for Monday, when the sessions begin. One MEP said he booked his accommodation a staggering five years in advance to ensure obtaining a room at a reasonable rate. For an EU obsessed by climate change and its possible effects, more embarrassing is the report's admission that "10,200 tonnes of CO2 per year would be saved if Strasbourg were no longer used as a place of work." That is the equivalent of 12,000 cars driving around the circumference of the world. In an attempt to cut emissions, at the end of last year MEPs were sent an email from the parliament's helpdesk, informing them that, from now on, all televisions in Strasbourg would be switched off between plenary sessions. In other words, it suggests that for the previous 14 years, televisions had been left on for weeks at a time, even when MEPs were in Brussels rather than France. It goes on to explain how MEPs can switch their televisions back on. The helpdesk email. which has been passed to The Telegraph, states: "We hereby inform you that we took the initiative to turn off all the TV sets in Strasbourg between the sessions. Apart from the substantial reduction of energy consumption, this action will also provide for a better protection of these devices in case of sudden electrical incident. When arriving to your office at Strasbourg, you will have to turn on again the TV before using the remote control to select your channel (the switch is located behind the TV set). Please note that individual requests to turn on again your TV before your arrival can be addressed to the LSU MEP Helpdesk. Please also remember to turn off as many devices as you can before leaving your EP office in Brussels as well as in Strasbourg for the reasons explained above. We are convinced as well as you that the sum of small actions can contribute to a better environment, and we thank you in advance for your cooperation. MEPs are fed up with the upheaval and cost created by the Strasbourg circus. At the end of last year, they voted for the two-parliament system to be scrapped by a three-to-one majority. But change is unlikely to happen soon. The problem is simple: the French government, which has a power of veto, will not budge. The French insist on maintaining Strasbourg's role because of the substantial amount of money the travelling circus brings to the region. Its status is set in stone under a European treaty signed in 1992, which can only be revoked should all member states agree it. Ashley Fox, the Conservative MEP for the South West, who organised the vote to scrap one of the parliaments, said: "This craziness has to stop. They say the definition of madness is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. We go to Strasbourg every month and every time it costs millions of pounds and wastes tons of carbon. Now how mad is that? When the city was chosen as a seat of the parliament, it was a symbol of peace and reconciliation. Now it is a symbol of waste and stupidity - the perfect example of all that is wrong with the EU. On Wednesday, Mr Fox will table an amendment to cut the number of days the European Parliament sits in Strasbourg from four to three. It is likely to be ruled unlawful because of the treaty in place protecting Strasbourg's status. Calls to scrap the Strasbourg parliament will be reinforced at a major conference on EU reform this week, which will be hosted by Open Europe, a think tank, and attended by ministers, MPs and business leaders from across Europe. Stephen Booth, the research director of Open Europe, said: "The European Parliament's travelling circus represents all that is wrong about the EU in the eyes of electorates across Europe: the unnecessary waste and the political stalemate that perpetuates it. With new European elections this year, now is the time for EU leaders to put an end to this PR disaster. A spokesman for the European Parliament said: "A recent study by the European Parliament shows that €103 million (£85 million) could be saved each year if all European Parliament operations were transferred from Strasbourg to Brussels." She added: "Since the European Parliament owns its buildings in Strasbourg and most of those it uses in Brussels, many of the operating costs incurred during a Strasbourg session would also be incurred, at least in part, if the session were to be held in Brussels, for example: MEPs" travel expenses, interpretation and translation costs, audiovisual costs. "Other costs, such as those of transporting documents to Strasbourg or mission costs for parliament's staff or MEPs" assistants, are incurred only if Parliament travels to Strasbourg."