Stepping down from Euro role

Stirling’s newly-elected MP is no longer a Member of the European Parliament.

Alyn Smith was Scotland’s youngest MEP when he was first elected to Brussels in 2004 and he has served as an MEP since then.

However, his tenure as an MEP came to an end in the early hours of Friday when he was declared winner of the poll to be Stirling constituency’s latest MP.

That’s because a European Council decision of 2002 stated that‘the office of

MEP is incompatible with that of member of a national parliament’.

An MEP who is elected as an MP, or appointed a Peer, therefore, has to stand down from the European Parliament.

A spokesman for Mr Smith said:“Alyn has made a commitment to Stirling as the newly-elected MP for the area. As of the moment he was elected as the local MP, he stopped being an MEP. Indeed, it is currently against European law to continue with the dual mandate of serving as an MP whilst sitting as an MEP.

“Therefore, Alyn begins on day one working full time to represent the interests of the Stirling area, its people and its communities in the UK Parliament.”

Mr Smith was last week one of 48 SNP MPs elected to the new Parliament in which Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won an overall majority of 80.