SIR - My recent three-hour visit to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg was most revealing.

I went by invitation of my MEP, at my own expense, on February 14.

Strasbourg is only used for four days in every month, solely for the purpose of voting on new EU laws, as specified in the Treaty of Amsterdam and is not popular with the MEPs, but Belgian and German vested interests keep it going.

Once a month, they load up 10 articulated lorries with 12 tons of paper, books and filing cabinets and transport it 275 miles from Brussels to Strasbourg.

Four days later, they reverse the procedure and take it all back again.

This is together with 5,000 personnel - MEPs, secretaries, translators, clerks and journalists. The cost is reputed to be 200 million euros a year - £120 million, possibly more.

When not in use for the voting on new laws, the no-expense-spared building has to be heated, maintained, staffed, cleaned and kept secure. All staff have to be paid.

Voting on new EU laws, is manic. MEPs have an itinerary of maybe 200 proposed new laws, on which they must be quite clear, before the high-speed voting. In addition, they often block vote' similar laws, maybe 10-15 at a time. Westminster it is not!

A rejected law goes back to Brussels for further consideration and re-submission next month.

With this speed, naturally mistakes are made in voting, but on the whole it seems to work. The EU is a total paper factory, as everything then has to be translated into about 32 EU approved languages.

Strasbourg is basically a monumental waste of our money!

Stanley D Parr, Pershore.