For most of the past fifteen years, pro-European Conservatives have been on the endangered species list in British politics. In 2008 only three Conservative MPs out of a caucus of nearly 200 voted in favour of the Lisbon treaty.  Thatcher government was dominated by europhile big-beasts – Douglas Hurd, Leon Brittan, Ken Clarke, Chris Patten and Thatcher’s nemesis, Michael Heseltine, just to name a few. Of these, only Clarke remains in David Cameron’s government, like the last europhile dinosaur waiting to be made extinct.

The decisive movement was the passing of the Maastricht treaty in 1993, which cost Prime Minister John Major his majority in Parliament, and caused a decisive split in the party which took a decade to heal. To the eurosceptic rebels, this was the moment that the EU ceased to be about trade and became a political union hell bent on destroying the nation state. To the rest of the country, it is symbolic of a time when the Conservative party decided to make itself unelectable.

Even now, the degree of anti-EU vitriol in the Conservative party has to be seen and heard to be believed, and one of the best places is the Conservative Home site. Last week Robert Buckland, elected as a Tory MP in 2010, penned a thoughtful and fairly innocuous article to the effect that Britain is starting to assert itself in the EU and that this was a good thing. Fairly uncontroversial stuff, and quite hard to disagree with considering that it is only a fortnight ago that David Cameron teamed up with Angela Merkel to win a 3 per cent cut to the EU budget.

In fact, the comments on Buckland’s article by fellow Conservatives illustrates why the party’s moderate wing has tended to keep quiet and why Tory europhilia was – to paraphrase Oscar Wilde – like a love that dared not speak its name. Anybody who doesn’t think the Brits should close up the Channel Tunnel and thumb their nose at the continent is in the pay of ‘Brussels’ and/or a “quisling”. Quite how supposedly intelligent people equate support for British EU membership with Nazi collaboration is beyond me.

But, dare I say it, the green shoots of a more moderate eurorealism in the Tory party are starting to show. Several weeks ago, Buckland was one of a group of backbench MPs that launched the European Mainstream group within the Conservative parliamentary party. European Mainstream becomes the second pro-European campaign group to be set up in 2013, following the equally clunky-named cross-party Campaign for British Influence through Europe.

Since then, the EU has announced plans to negotiate a series of bilateral trade deals with G20 countries, with the jewel in the crown being a trade deal with the US – more manna from heaven for free marketeers you might think.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Tory party has not suddenly morphed into a hotbed of federalists. For the time being, there are only 12 MPs declared as members – with the Financial Times reporting that there are another 10-15 who are still too nervous to declare themselves public.

Neither is the party’s eurosceptic rhetoric likely to be toned down. The Tories are scared that losing votes to UKIP could cost them a parliamentary majority in 2015 and lead to a humiliating defeat in next year’s European elections. Taking a hard line on eastern European migration and complaining about the iniquity of ‘regulations from Brussels’ will remain the party’s default setting.

But it is significant enough that they feel brave enough to put their heads above the parapet, and are seemingly prepared to face down critics from their local constituency party. This may turn out to be part of the slow drift of MPs taking sides in advance of an ‘in/out’ referendum. But it just might be a sign that the Conservative party’s silent majority is finally ready to challenge the eurosceptics.

EU leaders started their first summit of 2013 in fine fashion. First talks set to begin at a civilised 4pm were delayed until 8.30pm – a cruel interruption into carefully laid dinner plans. Then there was no formal proposal tabled by Herman van Rompuy until 6am. Several hours later on Friday morning it was back for the second round of punishment. The deal – when it came – concluded 24 hours of talks. An impressive display of sustained ‘jaw-jaw’ even by the EU’s high standards.

After the succession of crisis summits that have blighted many a Thursday night and early Friday morning over the past couple of years, I suppose we should be grateful that the politicos are merely dealing with how the EU’s farm subsidies and structural funds are going to be divvied up for the next few years rather than yet another bail-out.

But, ultimately, it’s hard to avoid a sense of frustration. €959 billion sounds like a lot of money but that’s not what is being haggled over. Politicians left the Justius Lipsus building in November with a proposal of €973.5bn in commitments from Herman van Rompuy. With Germany and the UK leading a group wanting further cuts, but the “Friends of Cohesion” and “Friends of the CAP” both anxious to protect their slice of the pie, the amount of room for manoeuvre was limited. In the end, it came down to splitting budgetary hairs. For example, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte held up agreement for hours until he got an extra €45 million to go home with.

It is also far from clear whether or not the painfully reached compromise will be chewed and spat out by MEPs. The European Parliament is preparing to play hard-ball because it says that having payments worth around €910bn based on commitments for €960bn is a recipe for debt and deficit. Last night, Martin Schultz told reporters that the Commission would be forced to table an emergency budget in the coming months to cover a €16bn hole in this year’s budget. Without guarantees that the EU will have the cash to pay for its bills, he wouldn’t sign.

All this after a senior EU official told me that basically what’s at stake is 0.002% of EU GDP. Hardly worth staying up all night for.

Conversely, a handful of bland paragraphs in the post-summit communique could be rather more significant. EU leaders gave a green light for talks on a free trade agreement with the US, a deal that could generate 2% of GDP on its own. While the budget talks were uppermost in most people’s minds, it is the prospect of trade accords with Japan and the US – as well as the soon-to-be-finalised trade deal with Canada – that has the Brussels diplomatic corps excited. EU officials think that an EU/US agreement could translate into €275bn per year and 2 million new jobs.

In fact, taken in this light the budget talks are a microcosm of what the EU used to be and what it could and should be. A seemingly never-ending inward-looking debate about subsidies and investments in Europe by Europe. Ironically, the sections of the budget spending outside the EU- development aid and cash for the countries negotiating accession deals to join the EU – were among the items targeted by the biggest cuts. Meanwhile, outside the Brussels-bubble, the world goes on.

David Cameron’s EU speech attracted vitriol from the usual suspects last week. Guy Verhofstadt accused him of “playing with fire”, the Socialist group’s Hannes Swoboda said it was “tragicomic” – and those were some of the kinder, printable comments.

And, yes, there is something particularly tiresome about the self-satisfied smugness of many British eurosceptics whenever they launch into yet another tirade on the innumerable evils and iniquities of “Brussels” and then, within minutes, reveal an impressive level of ignorance of the EU decision making process.

But, in truth, it’s hard to disagree with much of what Cameron actually said. The Working Time directive – which Britain (and other countries) have opposed for years – was the only piece of EU law singled out. Even then, the Prime Minister didn’t give an idea of what opt-outs or exemptions he wanted from renegotiation. With his remarks about the EU’s democratic deficit, the need for the institutions to be closer to Europeans, for national parliaments to take a greater role in EU law-making, and for the bloc to become more competitive and outward-looking,

Whether officials in the EU institutions like it or not, it is a plain fact that – and I say this as someone who spent several very happy years working in the Parliament – the institutions feel remote from most Bruxelloise, let alone the rest of Europe. And the same officials are kidding themselves by suggesting that this gap, or the democratic deficit, has not grown wider as a result of the eurozone crisis.

Pro and anti-Europeans can surely agree that the crisis has seen a huge transfer of economic powers from national governments to the Commission and the European Central Bank. Lest we forget, neither of these institutions is directly elected. Without rigorous checks and balances and clear lines of accountability this cannot be sustained, and the evidence from the first two years of the European Semester indicates that national parliaments are doing a far from effective job in scrutinising the EU’s revamped economic governance rules. Closing this accountability gap should be a top priority for the EU as well as national institutions.

As far as the wider implications for Britain are concerned, my sense is that Cameron played a bad hand about as well as he could have done last week and managed – albeit only briefly – to unite his party. But he has still started the clock ticking on a time-bomb that will detonate at some unspecified and unknown point in the next five years. There are far too many “known unknowns” that could derail his plans to renegotiate. There may well not be an inter-governmental conference in the next five years if the eurozone crisis abates and, in any case, there’s no guarantee that Conservative eurosceptics will be prepared to wait that long. The Tories might also lose the next election.

But regardless of whether Britain’s terms of membership within the EU change or not, those who want the EU to survive and prosper should listen to the latest leader of la perfide albion. Just because he’s a British eurosceptic doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.

Like Christmas, the debate on a single seat for the European Parliament comes round once a year.

This time last year MEPs backed amendments calling for the Parliament to have a single seat. Today during the vote on this year’s budget report drafted by Labour MEP DerekVaughan, a whopping majority – 429 to 184 with 37 abstentions – voted in favour of a single seat for the European Parliament. Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of Parliament, Klaus Welle, will draw up a paper looking at the cost of maintaining the current arrangement before the summer recess in July. The most recent estimates put the annual cost of theStrasbourgtravelling circus at a fraction over €200m.

Yet despite its absurdity, there is precious little chance of MEPs getting the single seat they are after. This is because – as we all know – a single seat requires a treaty change, which requires the unanimous support of all member states and, guess what, there is more chance of seeing penguins on the moon than there is Nikolas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Juncker giving up the Parliament buildings inStrasbourgandLuxembourg. Even the new Citizens’ Initiative with a petition signed by millions of Europeans will do little change the minds of the French and Luxembourg governments.

This is a shame because the problem is not going to go away. There are still a handful of people who open their well-thumbed copy of the EU treaties and remind us that the Parliament does have a single seat – inStrasbourg, but the reality is that the politicians and bureaucrats have already voted with their feet and chosenBrussels. The national embassies are all here; the Parliament buildings are well equipped and resourced; the European Commission and Council are across the road. The palace of glass and concrete on PlaceLuxembourgis a well-functioning, working Parliament.

Now don’t get me wrong -Strasbourgis a beautiful city, rich in culture, history and political symbolism. But its Parliament is simply not fit for purpose. To be honest, I don’t think anyone really enjoys the monthly travelling circus down to theAlsace. After spending a full-day travelling because the transport links are so poor, MEPs and officials arrive at lonely buildings on the outskirts of town, and to offices that are as inviting (and roughly the same size) as the average broom cupboard. Late night committee meetings and debates mean that you are condemned to a solid week’s sleep deprivation and caffeine induced frenzy.

When I think of the current ‘three-seat solution’, I’m reminded of ‘Yes, Minister’ and Sir Humphrey Appleby’s withering remark that basing the EU executive inBrusselsand the Parliament in Strasbourg is “like having the House of Commons in Swindon and the Civil Service in Kettering.”

But although the de facto seat of Parliament is inBrussels, the buildings inStrasbourg can still be used well. The Council of Europe sits next door and the Louise Weiss and Churchill building could easily support European Council summits or aEuropeanUniversity.

Over the past 30 years the European Parliament has been transformed from a talking-shop to one of the most powerful legislatures in the world. It deserves to be taken seriously. The current three-seat arrangement is a public relations disaster, a terrible waste of public money, highly inefficient and environmentally damaging. Let’s hope that one dayEurope’s leaders see sense and admit that it’s time to end this expensive charade.