Next month's session
Next month's unprecedented ‘double-plenary' session will not add up to more hours than a normal plenary session, but will require some changes in arrangements for travel and accommodation.
The first session, taking place on Monday and Tuesday 22-23 October, will begin at the customary time of 5pm, so no change in hotel bookings or trains will be necessary. The second plenary session will also just be a day and a half, from Thursday morning until Friday at 2pm, 25-26 October, obliging an additional overnight.
The ‘blank day' that has been scheduled for the Wednesday of that week, to demonstrate legal separation between the supposedly separate sessions, will be devoted to group meetings and conferences (one has been organised on the subject of the banking union proposal), and some MEPs will visit the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.
Local hoteliers are checking with regular guests whether they would like to extend their booking. The chartered MEP Thalys train to Brussels, which normally leaves on Thursday afternoon, will instead leave on Friday afternoon next month. But there are doubts about how many MEPs will stay for the Friday session. “I think most people will stay here on the Wednesday, but many people will leave on Thursday,” said Edward McMillan Scott, British liberal MEP. “They've never stayed on a Friday before, they won't want to now.” In addition, the agenda for the Friday morning is likely to be thin, he predicted. “Agendas in recent months have been puffed up because there's relatively little legislation coming through,” he said.
On Monday evening, Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, told MEPs that because the Parliament's mini-plenary in October may have to be cancelled because of the damage in the hemicycle in Brussels, they may make up for it by scheduling an extra day in Strasbourg in December.
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