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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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