Juncker, his top officials and their fleet of private ‘air taxis’
JEAN-CLAUDE Juncker and his top officials fly by private jet between Brussels and the European Parliament in Strasbourg just 220 miles away, documents show.
The European Commission has access to a fleet of six jets, which it calls “air taxis”, to ferry Mr Juncker and other high-ranking officials around the world, it has been revealed.
It includes a £4.3million, four-passenger Cessna jet to make the journey to Strasbourg for the parliament’s monthly four-day sittings, despite the fact that daily commercial flights operate between the two cities.
The parliament spends around £200,000 to charter two express trains to take officials, MEPs and others from Brussels to Strasbourg on Monday morning and back on Thursday afternoon.
In addition, sources say, the Parliament charters an aircraft each Wednesday afternoon for around 100 staff who wish to return to Brussels early. It spares them the public train, which takes nearly six hours.
Mr Juncker’s spokesman said the European Commission president used the private jet when there was “no commercial solution” to fit in with his schedule. “The president usually travels to and from Strasbourg by car or on a commercial flight,” he said.
A spokesman for Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, did not respond to inquiries as to whether Mr Schulz used the jet, but he is listed as one of its users on contract paperwork.
The Sunday Telegraph has also learnt that the fleet of planes is also used by Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, and Federica Mogherini, the High Representative who acts as the EU’s chief diplomat.
A tender was awarded in 2012 to a Belgian aircraft company at a cost of €12million (£9.2million). It recently came up for renewal, providing 870 hours’ flying time over five years to destinations that also include Hanoi, Cape Town, New York and Tel Aviv. Bidders must provide a fleet comprising a nine-passenger midsize jet capable of a round trip from Brussels to Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi and a super-midsize jet that can take 13 people to Tokyo and back via Strasbourg.
The Commission also wants occasional use of a large jet, such as a Boeing 737, to take around 100 people to destinations such as Antalya on the Turkish south coast.
It reflects how the position of the EU has shifted since the Lisbon treaty from a regional trading bloc to a would-be global power with its own foreign policy. The parliament made the French border city of Strasbourg its official “home” as a gesture of post-war reconciliation, and its status is written into the EU treaties over which France has a veto.
Basing officials in two locations and shuttling staff between them now costs £130million a year, including £50 million on maintaining buildings that sit empty much of the time.
The Tories campaigned to end the situation in the 2014 European elections, and in his 2013 Bloomberg speech, unveiling his reform agenda, David Cameron insisted the EU must cut back on spending and reduce the “huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions”.
Geoffrey Van Orden, a Conservative MEP who investigated the “egregious” cost of the Strasbourg seat in a recent pamphlet, said it was “most unfortunate” that the Prime Minister’s renegotiation contained no initiatives to cut the price of membership.