Previously, our headline campaign demanded that all citizens should immediately be given the opportunity to vote in referendums on the Lisbon Treaty. Thus far, over a quarter of a million people across Europe have signed our petitions.
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This campaign aims to guarantee free access to scientifically based natural health remedies for all European Union citizens.
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On November 13, 2007, more than 30 survivors of the extermination camp Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps met in Auschwitz for a one-day conference.
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January 29, 2010
Ridiculously Generous
MEPs on the European Parliament's Budget Committee voted on Wednesday to award themselves an extra €1,500 and to hire an additional 150 staff. MEPs say they're in desperate need of more money because the Lisbon Treaty is now in force which means more work for them. In total, MEPs can already cash in on some £360,000 year in pay and allowances. For most people this seems like an incredibly generous amount - but not for the MEPs themselves apparently. The increase will cost taxpayers an extra €13.3 million a year and send the EP's total annual budget past the €1.6 billion mark.
Read blog entry on the Open Europe blog at blogspot.com
January 21, 2010
EU commission 'embassies' granted new powers
The EU has converted 54 out of the European Commission's 136 foreign delegations into embassy-type missions authorised to speak for the entire union. The move follows the coming into force last year of the Lisbon Treaty, which has the creation of a new EU diplomatic corps as one of its main provisions. All 136 commission delegations were renamed "EU delegations" on 1 January. But only the 54 placements were at the same time quietly given fresh powers in line with their new names.
Read article at euobserver.com
January 21, 2010
Klaus, Kaczynski say Lisbon should not enhance EU centralisation
Prague - The Lisbon Treaty should not open path to radical unification and centralisation of the EU, the Czech and Polish presidents, Vaclav Klaus and Lech Kaczynski, agreed at their meeting in Prague today, they told reporters. They said the EU should remain an association of states, it should not transform into a superstate.
Read article at ceskenoviny.cz (Czech Republic)
January 20, 2010
Kaczynski: Poland, CR should make EU more democratic
Poland and the Czech Republic should strive for the European Union to be more democratic, Polish President Lech Kaczynski told CTK yesterday ahead of his state visit to Prague starting on Thursday. "The aristocratic republic which the European Union is should be a little bit democratised," Kaczynski said. He said mainly Germany and France, which Britain joins from time to time, make decisions on what is going on in the EU 27. "Real decision-making should be further developed," he said.
Read article at praguemonitor.com (Czech Republic)
January 13, 2010
Big tobacco distorted EU treaty, scientists say
One of the biggest tobacco manufacturers in the world led a group of chemical, food, oil, pharmaceutical and other firms in a successful long-term lobbying strategy to shape European Union policy making in their favour, a new study says. After trawling through some 700 internal documents from British American Tobacco (BAT), academics at the University of Bath and University of Edinburgh say they have found evidence that the cigarette giant in the mid-1990s teamed up with the European Policy Centre, the prominent Brussels think-tank, to create a front group to ensure that the EU framework for evaluating policy options emphasised business interests at the expense of public health. According to the study, published in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal and funded by the Smoke-Free Partnership and Cancer Research UK, BAT constructed a policy network of a series of major corporations, including Shell, Zeneca, Tesco, SmithKline Beecham, Bayer and Unilever, to mount a multi-year lobby campaign aiming at shaping the EU's impact assessment system.
Read article at euobserver.com