Open Letter to:

Prime Minister, Mr. Edouard Balladur

Minister of European Affairs, Mr. Alain Lamassoure

President of the Alsace Region

President of the Lower-Rhine General Assembly

Prefetto of the Lower-Rhine Department

Mayor of Strasbourg, Mme. Catherine Trautmann

Strasbourg, December 15, 1994

Dear Lady and Gentlemen,

for several years we, as "non-French" European MPs, have been stubbornly defending the role of Strasbourg as a city-symbol for the great task of shaping the unity of Europe.

Once again, with this letter we would like to bring your attention onto the serious deficiencies staggering Strasbourg as the site of the European Parliament.

We will not write about the several initiatives some of us have carried out during the last 15 years in order to defend and support the role of this place.

The deficiencies we are here reminding you about, clearly reveal - in our opinion - the absence, the incapability or the lack of willingness of French authorities (despite their official statements) to activate the necessary measures to effectively implement Strasbourg as the capital of Europe.

Thus, 15 years after the settling of the European Parliament, its members arriving at the Strasbourg airport are still forced to face prolonged control procedures, almost similar to police investigations. Such a practice has nothing to do with the "recognition by sight" procedure in effect at the Brussels airport for some time now.

Also in regards to other airport services, we have to point out that - after all this time - we still have to engage in long migrations from one gate to the other through endless aisles.

About flights, their frequency is still exactly as we first lamented many years ago or, for several destinations, even worse and we are forced to stop in Paris, Frankfurt or Basel with plain and useless waste of time.

Still concerning transportation matters, while the European Union is putting great efforts in promoting the creation and development of a high-speed railway system, we have to point out once again the complete lack of any project whatsoever for possible ways of linking together our three work locations, that is, Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Brussels. About accommodation services, we regret to remind you that most hotels have the tendency to consider us as regular customers, given us for granted.

It also needs to be added that, when our sessions last till late at night, both our assistants and Parliament attendants have to wait in line, sometimes for even more than half an hour, in order to find a taxi to take them back to their hotels. Moreover, we had to realize that the great project of a metropolitan train - recently inaugurated by Mme. Trautmann - clearly avoided any route close to our area, "the European quarter," so as to abandoning it to its faith of a sad and glorious city suburb.

With the evident exception of French MPs, every other member has to wait until early afternoon, at best, before being able to access the daily newspapers of his/her own country.

All these "inconveniences", to which we could add an often insufficient telephone service, cannot encourage - you will agree - European media correspondents to cover our sessions. Fact that, you will agree again, does not promote at all a good image of our Institution before the European public opinion.

We have here pointed out, Lady and Gentlemen, a series of malfunctions and deficiencies which, if not rapidly and definitely resolved by regional and national French authorities - including also the administrators of Strasbourg - will force the "friends of Strasbourg" to abandon, despite themselves, the position of strong advocates for the role and function of Strasbourg of the last 15 years - so leading us to join, against our will, those supporting the choice of Brussels

Dear Lady and Gentlemen, we thank you for your kind attention.

With our best regards,

(First Name) (Last Name) (Signature)