Free Republic

London’s financial services center would lose access to the wider European Union should Britain quit the bloc, the EU’s justice chief said on Monday, warning that such a move would reduce its status to that of an offshore center. Viviane Reding’s blunt comments come amid a heated debate in Britain over its future in the 28-country European Union and will reinforce fears in the City of London that a departure from the EU will hurt its position as a global financial capital. “The City would most definitely lose its unhindered access to the (EU’s) single market in the case of...

David Cameron should get his own country in order instead of complaining about plans for a United States of Europe, a senior Brussels bureaucrat said last night. European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding said politicians need to “work on the quality of education and welfare” in the UK rather than blaming EU rules for letting migrants come to Britain to seek work. She accused the Government of “distorting” the facts about Europe and condemned Tory talk of “opt-outs, renegotiation and referenda” for “holding back our Union as a whole.” In a speech in Cambridge, Mrs. Reding said she believed the...

A campaign for the European Union to become a “United States of Europe” will be the “best weapon against the Euroskeptics”, one of Brussels’ most senior officials has said. Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission and the longest serving Brussels commissioner, has called for “a true political union” to be put on the agenda for EU elections this spring. “We need to build a United States of Europe with the Commission as government and two chambers—the European Parliament and a ‘Senate’ of Member States,” she said. Mrs. Reding’s vision, which is shared by many in the European institutions,...

The EU commissioner for justice and home affairs, Viviane Reding, will table a proposal in October or November that would fine or sanction state-owned companies whose supervisory boards are composed of less than 40 percent of women by 2020. The draft legislative proposal—seen by the International Herald Tribune and the Financial Times—aims to tackle persistent gender imbalances across the EU. … Women currently occupy less than 14 percent of board positions in top publicly-listed companies, according to EU data published in January. In 2010, it was 11.8 percent. …