Slow motion coup de'tat

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.eureferendum.com/

While we are considering the best ways of improving our parliamentary representation, news reaches us that the EU commission is close to launching its next attempt to undermine it, by formally recognising EU-level political parties.

To qualify as a "European party", it must be represented in at least a quarter of member states, by MEPs, MPs or regional assemblies, and must have taken part in EU parliament elections.

To promote this concept, the commission will propose shortly after the summer legal status for these parties. This will also mean changes to the funding rules to create incentives for such parties, and to penalise national groupings.

The plan is that the changes should be in place well before the 2014 euro elections, allowing European in addition to national parties to campaign in the elections, and to solicit donations for that purpose.

Pan-European parties have always been an ambition for the integrationalists. From the very first, MEPs were encouraged to sit in political rather than national groupings, and this practice has remained to this day. However, election campaigns have remained robustly national, often fought on domestic rather than European issues.

By promoting EU-level parties, the commission hopes to change all that – but the effect will also be to marginalise national independence groups such as UKIP, which find it difficult to forge cross-border alliances. In time, strictly national parties in the EU parliament will lose their funding, leaving them unable to function.

Once more, therefore, we see the direction of travel – more integration and more "Europe". Already, too much power has slipped from Westminster to Brussels and Strasbourg, and this can only make it worse.

Dirty tricks.

Thoughts?

[dbgtz]

I don't understand how they think this repression of the unwanted voice will last. I think if these people leave, more protests or perhaps riots are inevitable.

[jasey]

daniel can i come back on the forum like once a month without seeing you massacre french
there was no need for you to even use loanwords from french and no need for you to forget the accent
and the capital É since you seem to be in to using capitals

mostly, though, how in the world do you not know where the apostrophe goes
oh my gosh

coup d'état

since your thoughts on this are 'dirty tricks' i will say that my thoughts on this are 'polarizing but public move that is not a trick nor dirty'

cheers

[-:Undertaker:-]

since your thoughts on this are 'dirty tricks' i will say that my thoughts on this are 'polarizing but public move that is not a trick nor dirty'

cheers

When a 'parliament' attempts to remove party funding (which I disagree with anyway) from certain parties who fall into a certain group who oppose the European Union, that is a dirty trick and is incredibly undemocratic in that it attempts to favour one side of the political debate over the other by funding.

It would be similar to the Houses of Parliament hypothetically funding the Labour Party but not funding the Conservative Party, because the Conservative Party is not a 'pan-British' party with only one seat in Scotland.

But I know democracy in general is a struggle for continental countries to understand, so i'll forgive you.