Jan 16th-19th 2012 Brussels Commentary Pleanary Session

19 January 2012

Brussels Commentary               Pleanary Session      16th - 19th Jan 2012

A strange week with Monday and Tuesday taken up with voting for the next President of Parliament, vice Presidents and ....

As expected, or rather ordained, Martin Schultz the German leader of the S & D group won with 387 votes to 142 for Nirj Deva, Tory South East and 141 for Diana Wallis, Lib Dem Yorkshire. This is a much smaller majority than for previous incumbents.

In his acceptance speech Schultz said he was a President for all the MEPs..... wants the community method to become the norm.... but actually commented that failure of the EU was possibility. To most that was a warning, to us a happy new year.

The outstanding issue this week was the appearance of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. This was by special request of the Parliament in order to query him over alleged malpractice under his government. You will get a flavour of his reception from this press extract,-

"Orban in EP: Desperate for a European rescue, Hungary offers an olive branch  (The Times, p.35): "Hungary's conservative Prime Minister bowed yesterday to European pressure and promised to revise laws deemed to breach EU rules on democratic governance. But Viktor Orbán remained defiant over his mission to reshape his nation. In a stormy session of the European Parliament, Mr Orbán backed down on parts of his new constitution that became the subject of infringement litigation by the European Commission this week. These cover curbs on the independence of the Hungarian National Bank, the early retirement of judges and supervision of the country's data protection authority. (...) Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Franco-German leader of the big Green group, told Mr Orbán that he was taking the path of "all the totalitarian regimes" and compared him with Venezuela's President Chávez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. To widespread applause, he proposed sending a parliamentary mission to "find out why the homeless in Hungary, the intellectuals, people from my family ... Jews in Hungary, are afraid today." Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Liberal group and a former Belgian Prime Minister, said that the Commission had "missed the broader picture" by focusing on legal issues."

 

President Orban did not seem desperate to be rescued by the EU and he did not back down in the way suggested.  He maintained impassive throughout a 2/3 hour grilling, with many MEPs putting an oar in. He gave no ground and refused to answer the many individual points raised, good job too, we'd still be there.

 

This extract does not indicate the hostile and vindictive attitude of so many of the leading MEPs; especially Verhofstadt, they were just plain nasty. I do not know how many of their allegations are justified but I do know this; these MEPs are not qualified to assault him in the way they did. To clarify, he is a conservative, so no prizes for guessing whence came the worst attacks. Parliament should be above party politics when receiving a democratically elected Head of State. Consider;-

 

A month ago an MEP of the NGL (Nordic Green Left) complained that Parliament was becoming more and more anti- communist.

 

Cohn-Bendit's contribution noted above is typical of one who, two years ago, insulted the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, who had spoken out against the EU in Parliament. The resulting delegation to the Czech Republic included Cohn-Bendit and met in Prague castle, the official residence of the Czech President. Cohn-Bendit actually told Klaus that he should take down the Czech flag above the Castle and replace it with the Euro flag!  

 

Ms Harms, Greens, told the House a year ago that Vaclav Klaus was a trouble maker!

 

Orban was defended by several Hungarian MEPs and, especially, by Zbigniev Ziobro, one of four Polish MEPs to have joined us in EFD this week.

 

                                    *************************

Croatia Progress Report                  17th .Jan 2011.

You will know that Croatia is applying to join the EU. We have spent some of our EFD group money on a "No" pamphlet, as we did for the Irish referendum and which was very effective. That went to all Irish homes through the mail but we could not do that here. The Croatian government, and all its agencies are corrupt, they are deliberately stifling the No vote and the Croatian postal service would simply have destroyed our pamphlets. So we produced 1,000,000 of them for activist delivery. Hence the progress report below, sent by a Croatian leader of the "No" campaign. 

 

1)         There are 5 days left before the Referendum on Sunday. We have so far taken delivery of  900 thousand brochures, the last one hundred thousand tomorrow.

 

All of the received brochures have been transported to regional distribution centres, and are being distributed.

 

2)         The brochures have already received significant media attention. We had a rally in Zagreb last Saturday at which I spoke and held up the brochure for all to see, and pointed out that MEP's are telling us not to give up our independence, etc...etc... This was shown on State TV (briefly), Nova TV and others... 

 

We have started to receive pictures of people reading the brochure, published by some of the dailies. (Some pictures attached)

 

I had an Interview last night on local Zagreb TV (Z1), and I upheld the brochure and spoke of the message, etc...

 

3) I am also attaching a picture of one of our younger activists from the coastal town of Split, Kristina Ćurković, who had just been fined about 100 euro, by the local court in Split for taking down an EU flag some months earlier from a public building. After coming out of Court young Kristina, a theology student, held a short speech to the assembled and then proceeded to tear up an improvised EU flag. Her gesture got a lot of coverage, because she is defiant, young and pretty.

 

4) The Government Propaganda is absolutely awesome and relentless. The population is bombarded by pro-EU TV ads, radio spots, media articles, and messages from all sorts of politicians from the President, Prime-Minister to Ministers and local politicians, anyone who is prepared to say the EU is good.

 

And of Course the EU Commission is funding its own campaign.....

 

My hope is that people might adversely react to their overkill, and switch off.

 

The proportion is about 95% to about 5% in their favour. And even that is probably a generous estimate.

 

Our campaign is largely the brochures, and the internet, facebook...etc...

 

5) The printer is keen to send out his invoice, and wants to know to whom.

 

6) I will send you, in coming days, a list of all the destinations, and quantities of brochures sent. The number of regional distribution spots was increased to include some smaller towns. We had to incur some unexpected distribution costs of about 9500 Kuna (about 1250 euro). Would you be able to absorb this extra cost if we send the invoice?  

 

7) I am told that more than 1400 activists are involved in the distribution of the brochures.

 

8)  Do you guys have a list of British and European media email addresses to which  you send your media releases? It would come in handy...

 

       They say a week is a long time in politics. We have only five days.

 

                                    ************************

If you query our efforts to help a small group in a far off country remember its potential effect here. People still vote for the 3 EU surrender parties and not us, in spite of the polls showing our increased standing. Our vote is increasing but it lags behind the polls. I think that people look at Europe and see country after country joining the EU and tend to think, "all of Europe is in favour of the EU, we should not be the odd man out". Wrong. All over the EU small parties, opposed to their EU membership, are arising, but neither their media, nor ours, is telling you that. The truth is being suppressed.

 

So every little success over there, or even part success, will help our people see that all of Europe is not in favour of the EU. Once that penny drops.............

 

 

Derek Clark   MEP                                                Strasbourg  19th Jan 2012.

 

P.S. Failed EP President candidate LibDem Diane Wallis resigns in Yorkshire - wants husband to take her job, number two on LibDem regional list.

UKIP Press Release

Thursday 19th January 2012 Immediate

Responding to events fellow Yorkshire MEP Godfrey Bloom (UKIP) comments:

"This really is what you call taking a huff.

One minute Wallis wants to be President of the European Parliament, comes last and immediately decides she wants to feed sheep in Yorkshire instead. Really pathetic.

But trying to shoehorn her husband into her old salary as she resigns really is a working definition of nepotism in my opinion. One Wallis is as bad as another.

The LibDems are always screaming in favour of Gender Quotas but Diane Wallis has gone all quiet about that now. Jobs for the boys now - you could hardly make this story up