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.
Click here to read more.
This campaign aims to guarantee free access to scientifically based natural health remedies for all European Union citizens.
Click here to read more.
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.
Click here to read more.
July 15, 2010
EU to be given prominent UN role
The EU is to be given similar rights and powers to a fully fledged nation state in the United Nations general assembly. The proposals, following the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty and an increase in foreign policy power, will mean that Europe's desk will be moved from the margins, where it sits with organisations such as Nato's parliamentary body, near to the centre of the UN's assembly chamber. Baroness Ashton, the EU foreign minister or "High Representative", will be given a special seat alongside a new European UN ambassador with "the right to speak in a timely manner, the right of reply, the right to circulate documents, the right to make proposals and submit amendments (and) the right to raise points of order".
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: If the Oil and Drug Cartel that controls the Brussels EU gets its way, this latest development will become a stepping stone towards the cementing of its economic and political conquest of the world. Significantly, therefore, long before the Lisbon Treaty had even been drafted, the Cartel was already trying to export the political construct of the Brussels EU worldwide as a model to expand its control over other continents. As a result, for example, the architects of the African Union (AU) have not hidden the fact that the AU is being modeled on the European Union – with almost identical institutional structures, including a so-called “AU Commission.” Likewise, in 2009, leaders of East Asian countries announced that they had laid the groundwork for an EU-style bloc that will cover half the world’s population. These plans echoed similar proposals outlined by Australian prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008.
July 7, 2010
So Much for the European Project
Europe was supposed to have arrived. With the final approval of the Lisbon Treaty last year, the European Union sported a new, consolidated government. Europe's political elite believed it had answered Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's derisive question: what is the phone number for Europe? But continental politics remains chaotic and European nations are tottering economically. The European Union's future is now at risk. The question no longer is whether the EU can match the United States, but whether it can survive.
Read article by Doug Bandow in the American Spectator (USA)
June 18, 2010
Medvedev Says He ‘Cannot Rule Out’ Collapse of Euro
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says he can’t rule out the collapse of the euro as the European Union struggles to contain the sovereign debt crisis.
Read article at businessweek.com
June 14, 2010
EU instrument for spying on 'radicals' causes outrage
Civil rights watchdogs and MEPs have attacked new EU plans to gather data on people who voice or share "radical messages" in a bid to pre-empt terrorist attacks.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: Operating outside the basic principles of freedom and democracy, the Brussels EU – by definition – is a dictatorship. The power of the people to determine their government has been transferred to corporate interests. For anybody who is still in any doubt as to the Brussels EU’s real intentions, click here for an analysis of the truth behind some of its claims.
June 10, 2010
The future's bright, the future's orange?
The winning party in the Dutch elections, the VVD, has some interesting things to say about the EU on its website. Its leader, Mark Rutte, is favourite to become the country's new PM and may prove to be an interesting ally for EU reformers, depending on how much the VVD's rhetoric is watered down by coalition arrangements. The party's website reads: The VVD doesn’t want a "European superstate". We want a Europe that functions. Therefore, we don’t need a Constitution, but an EU which limits itself to its core tasks and offers solutions for the 21st century. The solutions of the former century were about agriculture and regional subsidies. In this century it is about climate and energy, asylum and migration flows and fighting terrorism. Therefore we need to go back to what we have: the current Treaties (the Treaty of Nice).
Read article on the Open Europe blog (UK)
June 8, 2010
UK monitors suspected radicals as part of European surveillance project
Police keep tabs on activists from across the political spectrum, documents obtained by EU civil liberties NGO reveal
The UK is taking part in a European surveillance programme which is designed to gather personal information about suspected "radicals" from across the political spectrum. Confidential documents reveal how an initiative to gather data on "radicalisation and recruitment" in Islamic terrorist groups has been expanded to incorporate other organisations. Political activists who have no association with terrorism could now find themselves monitored by authorities mandated to discover information about their friends, family, neighbours, political beliefs, use of the internet and even psychological traits.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)
Comment: For further information on the rise of the EU’s surveillance state, click here.
June 8, 2010
MEPs back web search history plan
More than 300 European MEPs are backing a plan that would force search engines such as Google to store details of web searches for up to two years. Two MEPs drew up the plan to help authorities develop an "early warning system" against paedophiles and sex offenders who were using the internet. However, civil liberties groups immediately criticised the proposals, which would represent a major increase in the monitoring of online activity.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
May 26, 2010
Ordinary people were misled over impact of the euro, says Herman Van Rompuy
Europe's "man in the street" was misled for years over the vast political and economic implications of the creation of "Euroland", Herman Van Rompuy has admitted. The EU's president told a selected audience of civil servants and businessmen that the Greek debt crisis and euro zone bailout had come as a nasty shock to ordinary Europeans. He said the public was not made aware of the full social and economic implications of the currency before it was created.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
May 21, 2010
Merkel and Cameron disagree on EU treaty change
UK Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday (21 May) rejected the the idea of a new EU treaty change to accommodate German chancellor Angela Merkel's vision of stronger economic co-ordination in the EU. "There is no question of agreeing to a treaty that transfers powers from Westminster to Brussels. Britain is obviously not in the eurozone and is not going to be joining, so it wouldn't agree to any treaty that drew us further into the euro area," Mr Cameron said on Friday (21 May) during a joint press conference with Ms Merkel in Berlin.
Read article at euobserver.com
May 20, 2010
German action on euro crisis could trigger EU referendum in Britain
Demand for new single currency rules raises possibility of Lisbon Treaty being renegotiated
Germany today stepped up its rhetoric against financial markets, throwing its weight behind a global tax on bank transactions and proposing a radical shift in the rules governing the single currency by insisting struggling eurozone countries be allowed to restructure their debt. Following Greece's debt emergency and with the euro in the throes of its worst crisis of confidence, Berlin also tabled a nine-point plan rewriting the euro regime to include legally enshrined budget deficit ceilings in all 16 member countries. The German demands, in a finance ministry paper obtained by the Guardian, could require the EU's Lisbon Treaty to be renegotiated, presenting David Cameron with a dilemma over whether this would trigger an EU referendum in Britain.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
May 14, 2010
Ex-commissioners face conflict of interest accusations
Transparency International, an international NGO which fights corruption, expressed "strong concern" after four former commissioners in the Barroso I executive had accepted positions in the private sector. A fierce integrity debate flared up when Benita Ferrero-Waldner of Austria, who held the external relations portfolio in the Barroso I Commission, Germany's Günter Verheugen (enterprise and industry), Ireland's Charlie McCreevy (internal market) and Bulgaria's Meglena Kuneva (consumer protection), assumed corporate jobs.
Read article at euractiv.com
Comment: To read the Transparency International press release, click here.
May 6, 2010
Several EU member states 'on brink of financial meltdown'
Senior Spanish MEP Alejo Vidal-Quadras has said that not only Greece but other member states are "on the brink" of financial meltdown. Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Vidal-Quadras said the EU faced "the biggest challenge" in its history. The Spanish centre-right deputy said, "We are on the brink of the abyss.”
Read article at theparliament.com
May 3, 2010
Huge National Debts Could Push Euro Zone into Bankruptcy
Greece is only the beginning. The world's leading economies have long lived beyond their means, and the financial crisis caused government debt to swell dramatically. Now the bill is coming due, but not all countries will be able to pay it.
Read article in Der Spiegel (Germany)
April 29, 2010
The Euro Trap
Not that long ago, European economists used to mock their American counterparts for having questioned the wisdom of Europe’s march to monetary union. “On the whole,” declared an article published just this past January, “the euro has, thus far, gone much better than many U.S. economists had predicted.” Oops. The article summarized the euro-skeptics’ views as having been: “It can’t happen, it’s a bad idea, it won’t last.” Well, it did happen, but right now it does seem to have been a bad idea for exactly the reasons the skeptics cited. And as for whether it will last — suddenly, that’s looking like an open question.
Read article by Paul Krugman in the New York Times (USA)
April 22, 2010
European big business admits to lobbying Washington, but not Brussels
Many of Europe's biggest corporations are avoiding registering their lobbying activities in Brussels even as they admit to the scale of their operations in Washington where registration of lobbyists is required by law, according to a new study. As a result of the different registry frameworks between the two legislative capitals - in Brussels, the European Commission's lobby registry is a voluntary affair - European big business on the whole is able to make it appear that it is engaged in much more lobbying in Washington than in Brussels. This is the conclusion of a new study by lobbying watchdogs that analyses what the EU's 50 biggest corporations say they are spending on influencing policy.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: The ‘Brussels EU’ is controlled by corporate interests and it is now a matter of public record that multinational corporations have engaged in successful long-term lobbying strategies to shape European Union policy making in their favour. As a result of these activities, the EU’s risk assessment process has been rigged to benefit multi-trillion dollar business interests – especially those of the chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries – at the expense of public health.
April 21, 2010
Citigroup says only ‘United States of Europe' will save euro
A Citigroup note to clients has warned that the eurozone is likely to fall apart unless the European Union's member states fuse both on the fiscal and political level. "Europe needs to stand up and decide if it is going to be a ‘United States of Europe' or a ‘patchwork quilt' of independent states," reads a note by Tom Fitzpatrick, chief technical analyst at Citigroup in New York, first seen by Bloomberg. The financial services firm, the largest in the world and one of America's big four banks, says that if such integration is not on the cards, the euro area is "doomed" even if the current Greek crisis is resolved.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: Fitzpatrick’s choice of words here are highly significant. Largely hidden from the people of Europe, a so-called “Action Committee for the United States of Europe” was founded by the wheeler-dealer Jean Monnet on 13 October 1955. The meetings of this clandestine committee began in January 1956 and were held in private. The ultimate goal, as stated at the committee’s inception, was “to arrive by concrete achievements at the United States of Europe.” Notably, therefore, the longest serving member of the committee’s Executive Committee was the German Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who sat on it between January 1956 and May 1965. Kiesinger had been a member of the Nazi Party during WWII and had worked in the Nazi Foreign Ministry's radio propaganda division. Playing a key role in the luring of Britain into the Brussels EU, meetings of the “Action Committee for the United States of Europe” were held throughout the 1960s and did not conclude until after 1973 when plans for the dictatorial ‘Brussels EU’ project were already well advanced. To learn more, read chapter 4
of ‘The Nazi Roots of the Brussels EU’.
April 15, 2010
A perfect symbol of the EU: the 18 MEPs who will claim full salaries and perks without taking their seats
Eighteen MEPs will, as predicted by this blog eleven months ago, start claiming full salaries and allowances without taking their seats.
Read Daniel Hannan's blog entry on the Daily Telegraph website (UK)
April 4, 2010
Airline passenger conversations to be monitored under EU project
Airline passengers could have their conversations and movements monitored under a European Union project aimed at tackling terrorism.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
March 23, 2010
Buzek suggests electing EU commissioners
Jerzy Buzek, the Polish president of the European Parliament, has suggested that future EU commissioners should compete in Europe-wide elections to get a "democratic mandate".
Read article at euractiv.com
Comment: All modern democracies around the world have one principle in common: their power derives from the people. However, this is not so with the “Brussels EU”. The “government” of this construct – the 27-member EU Commission – is appointed on behalf of corporate interests. No man or woman in Europe today has the right to vote for it or to terminate its rule. As such, the “Brussels EU” is undeniably a dictatorship. To learn the facts about the “Brussels EU”, click here.
February 27, 2010
Wads of cash and free ski trips on the EU gravy train
Campaigners last night stepped up demands for a crackdown on the European Union gravy train after new revelations emerged about how taxpayers’ money is routinely squandered. Astonishing new details about Euro MPs’ expenses included hundreds of pounds handed out in brown envelopes to their visitors to cover food and travel with no receipts needed.
Read article in the Daily Express (UK)
February 14, 2010
MEP’s spending spree forces paybacks, but the names are being kept secret
Concerns are mounting that the EU could soon face an expenses scandal that could dwarf the ongoing saga of British MPs, that caused widespread public outrage, leading some British lawmakers to go into hiding. It was recently discovered that undisclosed MEPs had repaid more than €3.4 million in “wrongly claimed” expenses. European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek is refusing to disclose the identities of the errant members, according to the Daily Telegraph, who have seen a letter where he says that: “Such delicate and sensitive matters must be treated with the utmost caution – avoiding undue haste that can unnecessarily and unjustly cause irreparable harm to members’ reputations.” It is being asked why the European Parliament, with its commitment to transparency, seeks to shield these members. Mats Persson, the director of the Open Europe think tank, said: “If the European Parliament was serious about cleaning up its act it would name and shame the MEPs who have misused their allowances and conned the taxpayer, just as the UK Parliament is currently doing.”
Read article on the New Europe website
February 10, 2010
EU President's secret bid for economic power
The new President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, is using the financial crisis sweeping the eurozone to launch an audacious grab for power over national budgets, leaked documents reveal.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
February 8, 2010
German minister calls for Lisbon treaty EU army
German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has called for the EU to proceed with plans for a European army under the Lisbon Treaty, which he dubbed “the beginning and not the end” of a common security and defence policy.
Read article in the Irish Times
Comment: The assurance given to Ireland prior to its second vote on the Lisbon Treaty, in October 2009 – that its traditional military neutrality would not be compromised by voting “Yes” – was entirely worthless. For, despite all the claims to the contrary, not one single word of the treaty had been changed since Ireland voted “No” in its first referendum in June 2008. Moreover, any hope for a potential democratic process within the EU about a decision to go to war – or even veto it – are an illusion. The leading export nations of the Oil and Drug Cartel are also the leading military and nuclear powers in Europe. Their governments are committed to defending the interests of the Cartel at any price.
February 5, 2010
Damning report hits out at EP expenditure
A damning report by a member of the European Parliament's own budgetary control committee is set to question the very fundamentals of the institution's budgetary discharge procedure, with its author coming under considerable pressure from the institutions's bureau as a result. Still in the process of being finalised, the report's rapporteur - Belgian Green MEP Bart Staes - told EUobserver the document ultimately asks one simple question: Is it correct that parliament should sign off on its own accounts? While the council of ministers, representing member states, also has to approve parliament's expenditure, a gentleman's agreement means scrutiny is kept to a bare minimum.
Read article at euobserver.com
February 3, 2010
US blames Lisbon Treaty for EU summit fiasco
The US State Department has said that President Barack Obama's decision not to come to an EU summit in Madrid in May is partly due to confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty. State department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told press in Washington on Tuesday (2 February) that the treaty has made it unclear who the US leader should meet and when. "Up until recently, they [summits] would occur on six-month intervals, as I recall, with one meeting in Europe and one meeting here. And that was part of – the foundation of that was the rotating presidency within the EU. Now you have a new structure regarding not only the rotating EU presidency, you've got an EU Council president, you've got a European Commission president," he said.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: As a result of the Lisbon Treaty, the ‘Brussels EU’ now has a total of four presidents: the rotating EU presidency (currently held by Spain); the EU Council president (Herman Van Rompuy); the European Commission president (José Manuel Barroso); and the European Parliament president (Jerzy Buzek). So who’s really in charge? To learn the facts about the ‘Brussels EU’, click here.
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