Location

The European Parliament has monthly sessions in Strasbourg, as required by a protocol attached to the Treaty of Amsterdam. This is unlike the two institutions of the EU's executive, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, which have their seats in Brussels, which is generally treated as the 'capital' of the EU.

Thus the Parliament is sometimes informally referred to as the 'Strasbourg Parliament', and Strasbourg as the democratic (opposed to bureaucratic) capital of Europe. But for practical reasons, preparatory legislative work and committee meetings take place in Brussels. Moreover, much of the Secretariat of the European Parliament (administration), which employs the majority of its staff, is located in Luxembourg, which itself used to host plenary sessions of the parliament.

The Parliament only spends four days each month in Strasbourg in order to take its final, plenary votes. Additional plenary meetings are held in Brussels. On several occasions, the Parliament has expressed a wish to have the right to choose for itself the location of its seat, and eliminate the two-seat system, but in the successive treaties, EU member state governments have continued to reserve this right for themselves. They abandoned the third seat of Parliament, Luxembourg, two decades ago, but the rival demands of Belgium (Brussels) and France (Strasbourg) to base parliament in their state has prevented a final Treaty as to which city would become the sole seat of parliament.

Moving various files and equipment between the two cities takes 10 large trucks and the costs for two locations are estimated at €200 million a year. A force of 30 people load the trucks for the 400 km journey between the two locations. Around 5,000 people attached to the Parliament, such as parliamentarians, advisors, clerks and journalists, also move between Brussels and Strasbourg. Most of the parliamentarians are against using Strasbourg and various initiatives have been taken over the years to have Brussels as the sole location. The latest of these initiatives was a EU-wide online petition, oneseat.eu. The petition was not accepted.