| Author | Message | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:31 am Post subject: EU Elections: Angry UK & Dutch Voters kick off election. |
| EU watches as angry UK kicks off EU elections
HONOR MAHONY
03.06.2009 @ 17:35 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The rest of Europe has been watching agog at the buildup of an almost insurrectionary feeling in the UK following revelations of MPs' abuses of the expenses system. The outpouring of anger could have significant implications for EU politics, as Britons unleash their fury via the ballot box and opposition parties call for an early general election.
Anger over the parliamentary expenses scandal in Westminister is set to be reflected in the EU vote (Photo: wikipedia)
The UK, along with the Netherlands, will kick off voting in the European elections and local elections on Thursday (4 June), with the governing Labour party facing the prospect of its worst electoral defeat in history.
The beleaguered Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, charged with reacting too slowly and then inadequately to the unfolding scandal, has been buffeted further in recent days by announcements that four members of his government, including two ministers, are leaving.
The weakened government has emboldened the opposition Conservatives, who feel 10 Downing Street is within their grasp sooner rather than later.
Conservative leader David Cameron on Wednesday in a rowdy parliamentary question time renewed his call for an early general election, saying the "government was collapsing before our eyes."
"Get down to the palace. Ask for a dissolution, call an election," he told Mr Brown.
Dissolution debate next Wednesday
The momentum for the early vote is gathering pace, with leaders of the small nationalist parties, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party, saying they will table a motion for a dissolution of parliament next Wednesday. The Liberals, the UK's third largest party, have backed the proposed move.
The motion will be the first time MPs will formally express an opinion on whether there should be an early vote.
Support for the move is likely to be further strengthened if Labour receives the drumming in the polls on Thursday that has been widely predicted.
Meanwhile, a quick early general election, which would most likely return the Conservatives to power after twelve years in opposition, could radically alter the prospects of the EU treaty coming into place.
If he wins the keys to Downing Street, Mr Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty if it has not yet been ratified by the rest of the EU. As a testing ground ahead of Thursday elections, he has already tabled a bill to say the referendum would be held on the same day as Ireland holds its second referendum on the document, expected in October.
As one of the most eurosceptic nations in the EU and seen as being against the further integration that the Lisbon Treaty would entail, it is likely that the UK would reject it.
Such a move would sound the death knell for the treaty and would plunge the EU into renewed talk of a two-speed Europe.
The other winners
As Britons head to the polls, all eyes will be on the expected smaller winners of the frenzy of discontent that has gripped the county for the past weeks.
The UK Independence Party, advocating withdrawal from the EU, says it aims to double its MEPs from the current nine.
Opinion polls give the party between 10 and 20 percent of the vote, while the far-right British National Party may get its first seat in Brussels.
A good showing by Mr Cameron's Conservatives - who want to set up their own eurosceptic group in the European Parliament along with Czech, Polish, Latvian and Bulgarian parties - as well as by Ukip would give more clout to eurosceptics than they currently have in the EU assembly.
The UK Greens are also expected to profit from voters disgust with mainstream parties and to achieve their best ever EU result on Thursday.
Politicians in Europe have been urging voters across the EU not to register their discontent with governing parties by voting for extreme right or extreme left parties, with EU votes often perceived as a useful no-consequences stick with which to beat incumbent governments.
"It is up to individuals how to vote, but I am asking citizens ... to counter extremism and at least vote for a stronger Europe. Those that believe in common values and are pro-European need to mobilise themselves," outgoing European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering told Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile, the latest opinion survey commissioned by the EU assembly shows the downward voter turnout trend of every previous EU election may be bucked this week. It reached a low of 45.3 percent in 2004 but the parliament poll suggests it may rise to 49 percent this time round.
© 2009 EUobserver.com. All rights reserved. Printed on 05.06.2009.
http://euobserver.com/9/28232/?rk=1 | |  | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 5:34 am Post subject: |
| EU polls kick off with boost for Dutch right-winger
By Paul Harrington
BRUSSELS (AFP) — A Dutch far-right party was the big winner as Britain and the Netherlands became the first countries to vote in EU-wide parliament elections, with first results reinforcing fears of low turnout.
The elections began in the two countries on Thursday.
Dutch far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) won 16.9 percent of the vote and four seats in its first European parliament elections, exit polls showed after 92.1 percent of votes were counted.
The PVV was second only to the Christian Democrats (CDA) of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, which came in nearly five percentage points lower than in 2004 at 20 percent, losing two of its current seven parliamentary seats.
Voter turnout in the founding EU member was down at 36.5 percent from 39.1 percent in the previous elections in 2004, according to the exit polls, the first indication from an EU country of how voters had cast their ballots.
The publication of the provisional results broke European rules banning their release before the polls have closed across Europe on Sunday night.
Over 375 million people are eligible to take part in the elections, which will roll out across recession-hit Europe. Most of the 27 EU nations vote on Sunday.
But the success of the biggest-ever transnational elections was feared to be tempered by voter apathy and a focus on national woes rather than European perspectives.
As a result, extremist anti-EU right- and left-wing parties hope to pick up votes and seats in the 736-member assembly -- slimmed down from the current 785 seats -- against a backdrop of rising unemployment and discontent.
Mario Telo, who heads the European Studies Institute at Brussels Free University, said: "This risk exists, as it did in the 1930s, even if the difference is that the extreme right will not have a direct political impact."
But the trend "will show that the national political crisis is dire," he said.
"Corruption, scandals and the quest for scapegoats risk bogging down European democracies, which will have to find the strength to react," Telo said.
Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who also faced local elections Thursday, is particularly under pressure: recent weeks have seen a string of revelations over dubious expenses claims by British deputies.
Outrage over the claims has cost several politicians their political careers -- and led to several ministerial resignations.
Opinion polls suggest Brown's governing Labour party could finish behind the main opposition Conservatives, the smaller opposition party, the Liberal Democrats -- and even fringe eurosceptics the United Kingdom Independence Party.
EU voter turnout has fallen with each election since the first in 1979, despite the growing role the parliament plays in adopting, amending or rejecting laws in Europe.
Polls have indicated this week could see an average lower than the 45.6 percent recorded in 2004.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged voters to turn out.
"Everyone must understand that Europe is very important to daily lives," said Sarkozy, who has made a similar appeal earlier with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Despite the economic crisis the European People's Party -- an umbrella group for centre-right parties from across the EU -- was set to remain the biggest political bloc in the parliament.
Despite the loss of the British and Czech Conservatives, who quit the EPP, deeming it too europhile, the bloc looked set to win 262 seats and 35 percent of votes cast, according to the final pre-election opinion poll.
The Predict09.eu survey said the Socialists would remain in second place on 194 seats but in a more fragmented assembly.
On Friday, attention was to turn to Ireland and the Czech Republic.
Cyprus, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia will go to the polls on Saturday before Europe's Super Sunday, when the other 19 EU nations -- including France, Germany, Italy and Spain -- round off the voting.
Source.... | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 7:16 am Post subject: |
| Ukip threatens to demand rerun of European elections
Eurosceptic party claims it has lost votes because its name appears below the fold on the ballot paper
Hélène Mulholland and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 June 2009 17.46 BST
The leader of the UK Independence party today threatened to demand a rerun of the European elections and called for a ministerial scalp amid fears that his party had lost votes because its name fell below the crease of the folded ballot paper.
Nigel Farage wrote to Michael Wills, the elections minister, demanding his resignation because he said the elections had not been contested on a "free and fair basis".
Earlier today, the Ukip leader lodged a complaint with the elections watchdog the Electoral Commission, in which it said that the last parties in alphabetical order were hidden when the first fold of the EU ballot paper was opened.
The party, which was tipped by the latest opinion poll to push Labour into third place in today's EU polls, said the way the paper was folded made it look as if Ukip was not on the ballot paper at all. The watchdog responded swiftly to Ukip's concerns by issuing a note to polling stations and returning officers to hand out unfolded ballot papers to voters.
But this failed to appease Farage, who claimed in his letter to Wills that Ukip had been "swamped with upset voters who failed to find us on the ballot paper".
"In many cases they have voted for other parties such as No2EU and even the BNP," Farage went on. "The most serious cases are where ballot papers were machine-folded and with a sharp crease. A good pair of fingernails were needed to prise open the last page. In the case of Yorkshire just Ukip was on the last page; in other areas up to four parties were disadvantaged. We are now getting information from across the UK with a view to issuing a legal challenge to demand a rerun of the election."
Farage accused Wills of being "totally unfit to remain in office" and called for the minister's resignation over his alleged refusal to meet with him to "resolve the crisis".
An Electoral Commission spokeswoman confirmed earlier today that it had received "a couple" of complaints from members of the public that party names were obscured by the crease.
"We have sent out a note to returning officers saying they should hand the papers to voters unfolded," she said.
The latest YouGov survey for the Daily Telegraph published yesterday suggested that, among people certain to vote in the EU election, Labour support stood at just 16%, behind the Tories on 26% and Ukip on 18%. The Lib Dems were on 15%, the Greens on 10% and the far-right British National party (BNP) on 5% – enough to give it its first seat in Brussels.
The BNP is the first party listed on the ballot paper for the European poll. Names are listed alphabetically.
Source..... | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 4:31 pm Post subject: |
| Irish, Czechs mull anti-treaty voices in EU vote
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
DUBLIN (AP) — Voters in Ireland and the Czech Republic faced a choice between pro-European establishment politicians and an upstart movement hostile to the EU bureaucracy as they filled seats Friday for the European Parliament.
An Irish-born movement called Libertas is fielding more than 600 candidates in 14 of the bloc's 27 countries. It hopes for breakthroughs in the Czech Republic and Ireland, two countries with pivotal roles to play in enacting, or sabotaging, the European Union's Lisbon Treaty blueprint for reform.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus is refusing to sign the mammoth document despite the approval of parliament. In Dublin, the deeply unpopular government of Prime Minister Brian Cowen has already lost one referendum on the treaty and is cautiously planning a second attempt.
To become law, the treaty — which seeks to reshape EU institutions and powers to make the bloc more effective as it grows — requires all 27 members to ratify it. Ireland is the only EU member putting it to a popular public vote.
Libertas founder Declan Ganley, an acid-tongued millionaire entrepreneur, is aiming to win one of Ireland's 12 European seats as a new pulpit against the treaty.
Ganley is seeking support on a platform that portrays Brussels as bad for free-market business and a threat to conservative religious values. Recent opinion polls suggest he will fall short — a failure that would hearten Cowen, whose Fianna Fail party is struggling to retain its four European Parliament seats.
In the key battleground of Dublin, many voters said they were determined to give Fianna Fail a black eye over its recent management of Ireland's unraveling economy. Few said they understood what their European lawmakers actually did — besides live a more privileged life than their own.
"I know they run up heaps of expenses. They don't seem to miss too many meals!" said Mary McAllister, 32, who was voting inside a Catholic church social hall after taking her two daughters to the school next door.
She ran a gantlet of leaflet-wielding, ribbon-chested party activists near the polling station. Most ubiquitous were supporters of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein, the main anti-EU voice on the left of Irish politics. Their leaflets urged voters to punish Fianna Fail. "Turn anger into action," they said.
In the Czech Republic, anti-treaty voices are seeking to exploit a relative political vacuum following last month's formation of a caretaker, multiparty government triggered by a no-confidence vote that ousted Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek from power.
Klaus has praised Libertas' efforts to build anti-EU sentiment across Europe and said Friday's vote would measure "whether we want to keep on fighting for the interests of our republic, or whether we want to hand over our sovereignty almost entirely to Brussels' bureaucracy."
But the major feature of the Czechs' campaign has been an Internet-driven egg-throwing onslaught by youthful opponents of the other major party, the Social Democrats, and its chairman Jiri Paroubek.
Tens of thousands joined a Facebook campaign titled "Eggs for Paroubek in every town!" The Civic Democrats denied egging on the assailants, who repeatedly pelted Paroubek and other senior Social Democrats at rallies.
The 736-seat European Parliament has evolved over the past 50 years from a consultative legislature to one with the right to vote on or amend two-thirds of all EU laws including on immigration, the environment, transport, consumer protection and trade.
The parliament can amend the EU budget — euro120 billion ($170 billion) this year — and has a role in appointing the European Commission, the EU administration, and the board of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany.
But polls continentwide consistently show that voters consider their MEPs to be overpaid, remote and irrelevant in their daily lives. Such voter disinterest typically fuels low turnouts and stronger-than-usual showings for protest candidates from the hard left and right of the political spectrum.
The parliamentary voting began Thursday in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and continues over the weekend in more than a dozen EU members including France and Germany. Results from the European Parliament elections will be announced starting Sunday.
AP Writer Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic, contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Source.... | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:01 pm Post subject: |
| Press Summary Archive
EU officials fear for Lisbon Treaty as prospect of Conservative government looking ever closer; Diplomats desperate to ensure that Ireland’s Lisbon ‘guarantees’ don’t prompt calls for re-ratification
05 June 2009
The FT reports that concerns are growing in Brussels that Gordon Brown’s escalating political difficulties could jeopardise prospects for the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. European governments are following events in London closely, with Franco Frattini, Italy’s Foreign Minister, acknowledging yesterday that Mr. Brown’s government “faces the risk of collapse”. With polls suggesting that the Conservatives are likely to win the next general election, EU officials are becoming increasingly worried by the Conservatives’ opposition to the Treaty.
EUobserver notes that, “The prospect of a snap general election and a potential Tory victory spells turbulence for Brussels, with Mr. Cameron having promised to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty and to call for the EU to return powers to London.” A leader in the Economist writes “Britain’s prime minister is losing his grip. An election later this year is the best option”.
Meanwhile, EUobserver notes that there is a continued tussle over the wording of Ireland’s ‘guarantees’ for holding a second referendum on the Treaty, which threaten the Irish government’s hope of having them informally agreed in a week’s time. The article notes that if the scope of Ireland's ‘declaration’ is too wide, then it could result in calls for a re-ratification of the entire Treaty.
An unnamed diplomat said, “What worries us is that our ratification will still stand.” The article notes that an agreement still seems to be some way off with another diplomat saying, “We would very much appreciate to get some clarity. We have only been briefed orally. The wording could raise real issues…re-ratification is one of the problems we definitely don't want.”
http://www.openeurope.org.uk/media-centre/summary.aspx?id=858
About us
Open Europe is an independent think tank set up by some of the UK’s leading business people to contribute bold new thinking to the debate about the direction of the EU.
While we are committed to European co-operation, Open Europe believes that the EU has reached a critical moment in its development. ‘Ever closer union’, espoused by Jean Monnet and propelled forwards by successive generations of political and bureaucratic elites, has failed.
The EU’s over-loaded institutions, held in low regard by Europe’s citizens, are ill-equipped to adapt to the pressing challenges of weak economic growth, rising global competition, insecurity and a looming demographic crisis.
Open Europe believes that the EU must now embrace radical reform based on economic liberalisation, a looser and more flexible structure, and greater transparency and accountability if it is to overcome these challenges, and succeed in the twenty first century.
The best way forward for the EU is an urgent programme of radical change driven by a consensus between member states. In pursuit of this consensus, Open Europe will seek to involve like-minded individuals, political parties and organisations across Europe in our thinking and activities, and disseminate our ideas widely across the EU and the rest of the world. | | | | Von Curtis | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:34 pm Post subject: |
| | I hope they really are losing control of the agenda and hopefully derail the Lisbon Treaty - it would be a great thing to see Brown go - no doubt David Cameron is the same from a different angle but there may be a lot of pressure on him to listen to the people. | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:38 pm Post subject: |
| From The Times
June 4, 2009
Right senses victory in European poll as Left fails to gain from global crisis
David Charter in Brussels
The big beasts of Europe are set to claim victory for the Right in this week’s elections, leaving the Left to wonder why it has failed to benefit from such a serious economic crisis.
Left-of-centre parties in government and in opposition are struggling in the six countries of Europe that choose the majority of MEPs in the biggest multicountry elections yet held, according to an analysis of polls due out today and seen by The Times. About 375 million people in 27 member states are eligible to vote.
Governing left-wing parties in Spain and Germany are struggling while the socialist opposition is in crisis in France, Italy and Poland. So it is the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi who are likely to emerge with the biggest smiles after the votes have been counted.
Projections for the European Parliament show that the centre Right will remain the largest group, predicted to capture 262 of the 736 seats, with the centre Left trailing on 194 and the Liberal group losing ground with 85 seats, according to predict09.eu run by the London School of Economics and Trinity College Dublin.
Analysts said that some of the centre-right parties were harnessing nationalist sentiment — with Mr Serkozy ruling out Turkish EU membership and Mr Berlusconi’s party putting out anti-immigrant messages — or they had simply adopted the main planks of Blairism — high public sector spending, liberalised markets and social justice — leaving the centre Left with nothing new to offer.
Fringe parties are also set to benefit, with the Greens forecast to perform well in Britain and France, as well as a good showing for the populist right wing, such as the UK Independence Party, forecast to win ten seats (down two on 2004) and Geert Wilders’s anti-Muslim Freedom Party in the Netherlands with six. The survey does not predict that the British National Party will make a breakthrough.
“Most of the action is on the Right between the mainstream and more populist Right emerging across Europe,” said Professor Simon Hix, of the LSE. “The failure of the Left is really their failure in the big six countries — voters in France are going to a more radical Left, in Germany votes are going to Die Linke [also radical left-wing] and the Spanish Government is suffering a mid-term swing, while the Left has all but disappeared in Poland and is in crisis in Italy.”
Victory for the Right when the results are announced on Sunday night would mean that José Manuel Barroso, the former conservative Prime Minister of Portugal, should be reconfirmed as President of the European Commission. In another sign of the disarray of Europe’s Left, it has yet to agree on a candidate to oppose him.
“At a time of economic crisis you would expect sitting governments to do badly and to be punished by the voters, and you would expect centre Left parties to do better,” said Jacki Davis, of the European Policy Centre. “But broadly speaking the Left is struggling to convey what they would do about the current situation. They are not giving voters a clear vision.”
Fringe anti-Establishment parties will pick up seats but a revolution in Brussels seems unlikely because of their disparate views. The Swedish Pirate Party, forecast to win two seats on a campaign to scrap most copyright laws after the prosecution of a popular downloading website, is likely to sit with the Liberals or the Greens in the Parliament.
Hugo Brady, research Fellow at the Centre for European Reform, added: “The real story of these elections is not the increase in the political fringe forces but the crisis in the centre Left. We seem a long way away from the days of progressive governance conferences and drawing inspiration from new Labour.
“Across Europe the centre-right parties are seen as the parties you turn to and trust as a safe pair of hands.”
In Britain, where the number of seats is being reduced from 75 to 69, predict09.eu puts the Conservatives on 24 seats (down 3 on 2004 result), Labour 15 (down 4), Liberal Democrats 10 (down 2), UKIP 10 (down 2), Green 6 (up 4), SNP 3 (up 1) and Plaid Cymru 1 (same). The full projection for the European elections forecasts that the new anti-federalist conservative group being formed by David Cameron and allies in the Czech Republic and Poland will become the fourth-largest bloc in the European Parliament with 53 seats. They will be followed closely by Greens on 50.
The British National Party would have to win about 8 or 9 per cent of the vote to secure a seat in to its main target region, the North West of England where its leader, Nick Griffin, is the candidate.
Mr Griffin is aiming to help to revive a pan-European grouping of the far Right in the European Parliament that would increase the BNP’s profile dramatically, with guaranteed speaking rights for the group in every debate. It would bring the BNP a share of about £1 million extra a year for secretarial and office support, beyond the MEPs’ already generous annual allowances of up to £350,000 each.
Besides the BNP, the new group could include Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National from France, the Forza Nuova from Italy, the Austrian Freedom Party, Flemish Interest from Belgium, Movement for a Better Hungary, the Greater Romanian Party and Attack from Bulgaria. Their campaigns have been fuelled by nationalistic slogans and hostility towards immigrants and ethnic minorities. Mr Griffin is understood to have held talks with representatives from several of these parties.
Attempts to create a far-right bloc have foundered spectacularly in the past, however, with the short-lived Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group in the last Parliament breaking up after 11 months in a row about xenophobic insults.
The Greater Romanian MEPs stormed out in protest at remarks by Alessandro Mussolini, granddaughter of Il Duce, who said that all Romanians were criminals. Ms Mussolini has now found a role in the Italian parliament in Silvio Berlusconi’s alliance of right-wing parties.
One of the last acts of MEPs before breaking up for the elections was to make it harder for a fringe group to be formed by raising the bar from 20 to 25 MEPs. They also rushed through an amendment to stop 81-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, as the oldest MEP, from acting as Father of the House.
Source..... | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:48 pm Post subject: |
| | Von Curtis wrote: | | I hope they really are losing control of the agenda and hopefully derail the Lisbon Treaty |
Likewise.
This is the best chance we've ever had since Ted Heath stood up and emphatically lied to the British people, conning them into complicity with the master plan.
The route to any degree of freedom isn't going to be pretty and won't be without plenty of tears, that's even if a route can be cleared.
If the only way is a temporary 'hook up' with the hard right for the purpose of the greater good in the long run.......then so be it. | | | | Von Curtis | | Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 12:08 am Post subject: GO BRITAINS - TAKE YOUR POWER BACK |
| | Good luck with everything - I will be hoping and praying enough people have woken up from the gradual brain-washing by stealth - I was listening to the BBC last night and it was doing full speed propaganda supporting Brown and their rotten plans to take more and more rights away from the people. | | | | ktholcombe | | Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 10:41 pm Post subject: |
| | Von Curtis wrote: | | I will be hoping and praying enough people have woken up from the gradual brain-washing by stealth. |
Me too.......but it's likely to be a vain hope. When people can't use the loo without complying with a new directorate telling them what times of the day/week they may defacate.......and then another directorate requiring them to only use loo paper manufactured by a company they all have shares in...all directorates to be enforced at gunpoint of course......then they'll be squealing like stuck pigs. But let's face it, we probably won't reach that stage in our lifetimes, it'll be what our children inherit unless we can do something to stop it.
| Quote: | | I was listening to the BBC last night and it was doing full speed propaganda supporting Brown and their rotten plans to take more and more rights away from the people. |
Yah.....they very nearly choke everytime they are obliged to mention UKIP. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
