He European Committee of the Regionsthe body that represents local and regional authorities, has presented a project estimated at 49 million euros to renovate its headquarters in .
Until then, everything is normal (beyond the fact that it can be debated whether the amount is excessive or not). However, The construction of a new VIP conference room has been omitted from the public information of the proposal.
The same would have capacity for 450 people and its estimated cost would be 3.6 million euros. The details of this “conference center” are contained in some documents separate from the rest of the project to which you have had access .
It should be noted that the conference room would be intended for the use by the 329 members of the European Committee of the Regions in its plenary sessionswhich take place only six times a year.
The documents that had not been made public indicate that the new space would have interpreter booths, VIP areas and press facilities. Furthermore, it is justified that it would provide the European Committee of the Regions with “autonomy with respect to the buildings of the European Parliament and the European Commission”since its plenary sessions take place in Parliament or in the Charlemagne building of the European Commission.
They accuse the organization of lack of transparency
Unions and staff have denounced that the absence of reference to that “conference center” in internal documents represents a lack of transparency on the part of the organization.
Regarding what happened, a press officer from the Committee of the Regions has assured that management had prepared and shared the information relating to the VIP conference room with the Committee on Financial and Administrative Affairs (which deals with the administration and budgets of the Committee) and had discussed it with the personnel committee on March 25precisely the day in which POLITICO contacted the institution to know his version of the events.
