Hello and welcome to EU Untangled, the podcast that unravels EU politics and policies.

This is your host, Victor Aguilar. In today's episode, my co-host Alex Roth and I zoom into the

European Parliament and its unique, some there say bizarre, seemingly incomprehensible arrangement

of having one official seat but three main places of work

stretching across three different European countries. You may be asking yourselves,

who decided this? When? How? And most importantly, why? What function does it serve? Does this

arrangement work as well as it's supposed to? And if not, should we do

something to change it? This discussion is particularly relevant as we approach a new round of

European elections in June this year, where European citizens will vote to elect 720 members of the

European Parliament across the 27 member states of the European Union.

The European Parliament is the only EU institution whose members are directly elected by European

citizens, and therefore the only one that directly represents their interests. Sounds important?

Well, it kind of is. So buckle up and join us in this discussion.

Oh, and don't miss out on the opportunity to vote in the EU elections. It will take place between

the 6th and the 9th of June, 2024. You can find all the relevant information on

elections.europa.

That's right. Europa with an A. Elections.europa.com. Without further ado, welcome to EU.

Untangled. Hey Alex, I have a little question for you.

What do you think happens once a month in the beautiful,

picturesque city of Strasbourg? Yeah, that's a great question. So Strasbourg is indeed a very

nice city and probably it has something to do with the European Parliament, I guess.

Damn, you're too smart for me, man. What I heard is that kind of a lot of people move once a month from Brussels,

...