French Republic v European Parliament.
Date: 1997-10-01
20 The Governments of the Member States are therefore made responsible for supplementing the system of institutional provisions provided for by the Treaties in order to ensure the working of the Communities.  They have not only the right but also the duty to exercise that competence (Case 230/81 Luxembourg v Parliament [1983] ECR 255, paragraph 35).
21 The Governments of the Member States have thus adopted decisions concerning the provisional places of work of the institutions on a number of occasions prior to the adoption of the Edinburgh Decision.  In Joined Cases C-213/88 and C-39/89 Luxembourg v Parliament [1991] ECR I-5643, paragraph 52, the Court nevertheless held that the Governments of the Member States had not yet, at that time, discharged their obligation to determine the final seat of the institutions in accordance with the abovementioned provisions of the Treaties.
24 Given a plurality of working places, the exercise of that competence involved not only the obligation to determine the location of the seat of the Parliament but also the implied power to give precision to that term by indicating the activities which must take place there.
25 The intention of the Governments of the Member States was therefore to provide that the seat of the Parliament, in Strasbourg, be the principal place where it meets in ordinary plenary sitting, and to that end to specify the mandatory number of part-sessions which must be held there.
28 Furthermore, by specifying that the budget session is to be held in Strasbourg, the Governments of the Member States intended that the Parliament exercise its budgetary powers in plenary sitting, in accordance with Article 203 of the EC Treaty, during one of the ordinary plenary part-sessions held at the seat of the institution.
29 The Edinburgh Decision must thus be interpreted as defining the seat of the Parliament as the place where 12 ordinary plenary part-sessions must take place on a regular basis, including those during which the Parliament is to exercise the budgetary powers conferred upon it by the Treaty.  Additional plenary part-sessions cannot therefore be scheduled for any other place of work unless the Parliament holds the 12 ordinary plenary part-sessions in Strasbourg, where it has its seat.
30 Contrary to the Parliament's contention, the Governments of the Member States have not, by so defining its seat, encroached upon the power of the Parliament to determine its own internal organization, conferred by Articles 25 of the ECSC Treaty, 142 of the EC Treaty and 112 of the EAEC Treaty.
31 Whilst the Parliament is authorized, under that power of internal organization, to take appropriate measures to ensure the proper functioning and conduct of its proceedings, its decisions in that regard must respect the competence of the Governments of the Member States to determine the seat of the institutions (Case 230/81, cited above, paragraph 38, and Joined Cases C-213/88 and C-39/89, cited above, paragraph 29).
32 The Court has also held that the Member States have the duty, in exercising their competence to determine the seat of the institutions, to respect the Parliament's power to determine its own internal organization and to ensure that such decisions do not stand in the way of the proper functioning of that institution (Joined Cases 358/85 and 51/86 France v Parliament [1988] ECR 4821, paragraph 35). Whilst it is true that the Edinburgh Decision does place certain constraints on the Parliament as regards the organization of its work, those constraints are inherent in the need to determine its seat while maintaining several places of work for the institution.  Nor do they conflict with the practice generally followed by the Parliament.