Inside out

Our fortnightly digest of facts and rumours from Brussels and beyond.

The travelling circus

MEPs returned to Strasbourg last week for the first plenary session after the summer break to hear some good news: the next two sessions would be held during a single week in October—saving MEPs their second September trip across the border. However, MEPs soon learned that the advocate general to the Court of Justice considers the two-sessions-in-a-week plan to be “inconsistent” with treaty requirements. As one MEP forlornly puts it: “In reality, it is the insistence that the Parliament meets 12 times a year in Strasbourg that is inconsistent: inconsistent with logic.”