Parliament should decide its own location

[Lars Næsbye Christensen]

I propose that Article II, 2. either be deleted (preferably) or replaced with the following:

“The European Congress and its two separate Houses reside in Brussels, unless the Houses agree on a different residence within the territory of the Federal European Union.”

and Section 5.3 have deleted “outside of Brussels”.

The motivation has two reasons.
1. We cannot know that Belgium will be an initial party to the federation, and having a legislative assembly physically placed outside the federation it provides laws for is not justifiable.
2. The Congress should be able to determine its own location. Few constitutions specify the location without a way for the assembly to move itself within the nation, even if they specify a capital. E.g. the Swedish constitution does name Stockholm but allows for the parliament to decide to move. The US federal government is in Washington, DC, because of the Residence Act of 1790, not the constitution.

I know that the current EU setup has its specific problems with Strasbourg, Brussels and the ‘traveling circus’, but I think the federal constitution should be unbound by the flaws of an intergovernmental past at least in word and form.

[Jakub Jermar]

I fully support this motion. Ideally the Congress should self-organize before its first session. Its seat can be then fixed by a federal law, but let’s not fix Brussels in the Constitution.

[Christer Lundquist]

I concur too. Congress should decide freely such matters when constituting itself. For all we know, the peoples’ representatives might even think it proper to mark the transition to a new paradigm of European history by moving the seat of Congress to a new location altogether. Like Brazilia, one could even imagine a future new administrative capital, perhaps located geographically in the center of our Continent, perhaps named Europa 🙂

[Ramon Maynou]

I concur too.

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