ConHome readers will be used to hearing about the wasteful, pointless charade that is the European Parliament's monthly commute to Strasbourg. So often is it used as an example of the EU's profligacy with public money that you're probably bored of hearing about it.
Well then, allow me to introduce you to another shining example of EU waste: the twice-yearly meetings of the Africa, Caribbean, Pacific / European Union (ACP-EU) Joint Parliamentary Assembly.
Chaired by the UK's very own Glenys Kinnock, the ACP-EU is responsible for spending an annual budget of €2.7 billion. For most part, it is a noble organisation which does a considerable amount to assist with infrastructure projects in the developing world and post-conflict reconstruction.
Good work aside, an agreement between ACP-EU members demands that the two annual meetings of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly must take place away from the European Parliament's headquarters in Brussels.
For the past week, 78 Members of the European Parliament and 78 representatives from states that are signatories to the Cotonou Agreement have sat in session at the lavish Clarion Congress Hotel in Prague discussing how to end world poverty.
A quick glance at the hotel's website puts room prices at €223 per night.
Aside from the 156 members of the Joint Assembly there will, at a conservative estimate, have been at least 150 staff from the Parliament's secretariat and overseas delegations present leaving a combined room bill of €317,552 for the four day conference.
Add banqueting charges, the rental of the conference centre and taxpayer-funded travel for each of the delegates to that total and the figure must surely stand far in excess of €1,000,000.
The Prague meeting of the ACP-EU is, however, comparatively down-market when one considers that in the past five years the body has met in Cape Town, Rome, Vienna, Port Moresby, Kigali and Barbados. In the last twelve months, the body has held additional regional meetings in Guyana, Vanuatu and Namibia.
Rather than travelling the world and meeting in grand hotels, surely it would be a better use of taxpayer's money for the body to meet in the Parliament's more than adequate buildings in Brussels? Surely it would make more sense to plough the money wasted on these conferences into worthwhile development projects?
While in the developing world people are starving, the ACP-EU's wasteful globetrotting is morally indefensible.
