Free Republic

A new poll released by Germany’s Bild newspaper on Saturday, conducted in six countries in late February and early March, showed the far-right Europe of Nations and Freedom Group (ENF) was likely to win 67 seats in the European Parliament election in May. Europeans go to the polls on May 23-26 to elect representatives to the 705-seat European Parliament. Currently, the ENF group holds 37 seats. According to the Bild report, which surveyed more than 9,000 people, right-wing euroskeptic parties are in the lead in three of the six countries surveyed. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party is...

The President of the European Parliament has hailed the "miracle" of Jewish life reemerging in Germany once more, while warning that "the demons of the past" were making a return to the shores of Europe in the form of rising anti-Semitism. Speaking in Brussels on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Martin Schulz told the assembled Jewish and European leaders that the fact that "more than 100,000 Jewish people live again in my home country, in Germany, for me it is a miracle." But he warned that "miracle" was under threat, with increasing numbers of Jews leaving Europe as anti-Semitism continues to...

A group of over 50 European Parliament members has nominated a controversial Egyptian activist for the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, despite his having advocated the assassination of Israelis and political leaders in Egypt and called for an end to the State of Israel. Alaa Abdel Fattah, 32, an Egyptian blogger and political activist, has been arrested numerous times by Egyptian authorities since the eruption of a popular revolution in the country in early 2011. Abdel Fattah, who boasts 626,000 followers on Twitter and 156,000 on Facebook, was released on bail September 15 after being charged with organizing...

Euroskeptic deputies were denied several of the European Parliament’s top committee posts on Monday (7 July), as the assembly’s centrist groups joined forces to shut them out. The committees elected chairpersons and vice-chairpersons using the “D’Hondt method” on the relative sizes of the EU assembly’s seven political groups. Twenty one of the 22 committee chair posts, and the vast majority of the 88 vice-chair roles, were uncontested and elected by acclaim. However, the conservative EPP, center-left S&D and liberal ALDE groups on the petitions committee joined forces to reject Eleanora Evi, a member of the euroskeptic EFDD group from Italian...

Conservative Party Leader David Cameron is trying to sabotage UKIP’s influence at the European Parliament, just days after trying to appear sympathetic to euroscepticism by telling the British people that their message at the polls was “received and understood.” Instead of accepting UKIP's victory, Cameron has started a drive to cut off the legs of “the people’s army” in Brussels and Strasbourg. He has assigned Conservative Party fixers to do deals with hard-right and populist parties which, until now, the Conservatives claimed were “unacceptable.” The Tories are trying to stop Nigel Farage from forming a political group in the parliament...

Ukip has surged into the lead in the European election contest despite a bruising week of controversies, a poll revealed today. Nigel Farage's party recorded 31 per cent support in YouGov research for a Sunday newspaper, three points ahead of Labour, with the Tories languishing in third on 19 per cent. It is the first time the company has given Ukip an outright advantage in the race, with ballots due to be cast in less than a month.

MEPs on Tuesday (15 April) overwhelmingly approved the creation of a new authority and fund for failing banks—a missing element to the so-called banking union aimed at minimizing the public cost of future financial crises. The final vote on the creation of a €55 billion fund financed by the banks themselves passed with 570 MEPs in favor, 88 against and 13 abstentions, while new rules in cases where public money needs to be used for winding down banks also gathered a similar majority: 584 votes in favor, 80 against and 10 abstentions. One key concession won by MEPs from governments...

Imprisoning gays and lesbians for their sexuality is a “disgrace” that should disqualify offending countries from EU aid, the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, told a joint summit with MPs from the Pan-African Parliament yesterday (31 March), sparking a row. On 25 March, Ethiopia became the third African country, after Uganda and Nigeria, to institute long-term imprisonments for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people, with other African states, including Kenya, said to be preparing to follow suit. This represented “an unacceptable violation of the basic rights of individuals” said Schulz, who has been widely tipped to be...

Europe’s far left is set to almost double its deputies in the upcoming European Parliament elections in May. Poll predictions indicate that the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group is set to become the parliament’s third or fourth largest group, with the number of deputies rising from the current 35 to around 60. At third place, it would replace the liberals (ALDE), behind the center-left S&D and center-right EPP. […] The parties are against what they describe as neo-liberal policy-making at the EU level, want more funding for social programs, and want to create what they describe as “another...

The UK Independence Party is on course to win the largest share of the vote in May's European Elections, according to a new poll. The party is currently on 30 percent, with Labour in second place on 28. The ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday, which bases its European voting figures on the 38 percent of respondents who said they are "absolutely certain" to vote, is the first poll for some time to ask a question specifically about the European elections. The Conservatives, who maintain that they are the only party who can offer a referendum on the EU,...

Europe’s far-left are set to outnumber the Liberals in the next European Parliament, according to a pan-EU opinion poll published on Wednesday (5 March). In the second of a series of fortnightly forecasts in the three months before Europe’s 400 million voters go to the ballot booths from 22-25 May, Pollwatch Europe forecasts that the Parliament’s leftist GUE group would see its number of MEPs swell to 67 seats and become the third largest group in the assembly. For their part, the Liberals would be reduced to 61 seats, well down on the 85 seats they secured five years ago....

A myriad small German parties, including the neo-Nazi NPD, could enter the European Parliament following a ruling by the Constitutional Court on Wednesday (26 February) to abolish the minimum threshold for the vote. The verdict, approved with 5 out of the 8 votes in the judging panel, says fringe parties are being discriminated against with the current three-percent threshold. …

Martin Schulz, who is visiting Israel to give a speech in the Knesset, wasn't eager to discuss settlements with reporters. Anti-Semitism has been a constant in Europe, and that hasn't changed irrespective of what goes on in the Middle East, the president of the European Parliament, who is in Israel to deliver a speech to the Knesset later Wednesday, told The Jerusalem Post. "Anti-Semitism always existed in Europe," said EU Parliament chief Martin Schulz. "I thought that after World War II we were stronger in fighting such demons in politics. This is a deception. Nothing disappeared, all the prejudice is...

A speech in Knesset Wednesday given by the head of the European Union Parliament caused outrage, and ultimately sparked a walk-out. Several MKs expressed upset as EU parliament president Martin Schulz, who spoke in German, repeated as fact Palestinian Authority claims of Israeli discrimination regarding allocation of water in Judea and Samaria, and of a “blockade” on Gaza. Schulz condemned Israeli “settlements” east of the 1949 armistice line as “an obstacle to peace,” and claimed, “The blockade of Gaza creates despair and extremism.” …

Alexander Alvaro, a prominent German liberal MEP and European Parliament vice-president, had cocaine in his blood when he was involved in a car crash that killed a 21-year old passenger last February, an attorney said. Alvaro is expected to resign over the issue, German press reports. The daily Bild quotes attorney Ulrich Bremer as saying that the blood test on Alvaro, who was badly injured in the crash, left no doubt that he was under the influence of drugs. …

The European Parliament called on Thursday (24 October) for EU countries to better implement European environmental rules despite the initial costs involved. The vote put the EU legislature’s seal on a deal with the EU Council of Ministers on the program to lay out the EU’s approach to environmental action up to 2020, “Living well, within the limits of our planet”. The program, the seventh of its kind, will structure EU action on all environmental policy, from water management to climate change, and boost so-called “green growth”. …

The EU’s current institutional set-up resembles a “Frankenstein” monster because there is no democratic separation of powers, European Parliament chief Martin Schulz said Monday (4 March) during a debate in Hamburg on sovereignty transfers to Brussels. “National sovereignty in Europe is based on a model of separation of powers: we have a government that can be voted down by a parliament and an independent judiciary overseeing that rules are respected,” Schulz said. He added: “What we are doing now is that we are taking bits and pieces of this framework and transferring them to the EU level, but without also...

In short: In a review of the outcome of the last two EP elections, the author explores the roots of the political alienation of Europe's voters. European Elections 1999-2004: A Shift in Europe’s Political Cultures ?Most analysis of the latest European elections present the vote predominantly as a snub to incumbents in Member States. However, seen against the background of the political dynamics in Europe since the 1999 European elections, this vote is symptomatic of a more significant change in Europe’s political cultures. Electoral dynamics in Europe at the beginning of the century: a right-wing re-alignment?Within the five years since...