European Union

The right-wing populist Forum voor Democratie (FVD), established in 2016, has unexpectedly emerged as the strongest party in regional elections in the Netherlands. The centre-right coalition has lost its majority in the Dutch Senate as a result of the vote. Commentators voice concern over the success of the new party and the xenophobic rhetoric of its leader Thierry Baudet.

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Opposition to the EU's planned copyright reform is growing. Critics argue that it amounts to censorship. The main point under attack is Article 13, under which online platforms may no longer direct users to copyrighted content. The German-language Wikipedia page went offline on Thursday in protest. Does the directive really protect those it is supposed to?

A bus driver hijacked a bus carrying 51 schoolchildren near Milan on Wednesday and threatened to douse them with fuel and set them alight. The police were able to prevent this. The perpetrator, an Italian citizen of Senegalese origin, apparently uploaded a video beforehand with the message: "Africa, rise up!" Commentators discuss to what extent the crime is linked to Italy's immigration policy.

The first duty of all MPs is to put the safety of the country first.

Contrary to popular belief, MPs are not beholden to follow the opinions of their constituents.

• That means that MPs in constituencies that voted for Leave are not under any legal or constitutional duty to support Leave if they believe that is not in the best interests of Britain.
• Conversely, that also applies to MPs in constituencies that voted for Remain. That in itself does not mean those MPs must also support Remain, if they don’t believe it’s in Britain’s interests.

Also contrary to popular belief, MPs are not beholden to follow the result of the 2016 EU referendum.

That referendum was advisory only, not legally binding, and Parliamentarians were (and are) under no legal or constitutional obligation to ‘obey’ that referendum.

MPs are not the delegates of their constituents. They are representatives. MPs are free to act in whatever way they believe to be in the interests of the country.

Indeed, they have a solemn duty to do so. The country comes first. Their constituents and their party come second and third.

Before the referendum, Parliamentarians by a huge majority – around 70% – would have voted for the UK to remain in the EU, because they believed that was in the best interests of our country.

None of the facts have changed since then, except that a highly divisive referendum offered a different point of view, by the slimmest of margins, and by a minority of the electorate.

For complicated reasons, MPs felt bound to ‘respect’ the result of the advisory referendum, even though in the heads and hearts of most of them, they didn’t believe that Brexit was in Britain’s interests.

It’s now crunch time.

Britain is facing the worst constitutional crisis in generations. We are due to leave the EU within a few weeks, either with a deal that most MPs don’t support, or without any deal, that most MPs don’t want.

And the decision must be made next week.

Or MPs could push to give ‘the people’ a new democratic opportunity to reconsider Brexit, now we know so much more than we did in 2016. Or they could vote to revoke Article 50 and to bring an end to Brexit.

It’s time for all Parliamentarians to examine closely the onerous responsibility they must now confront.

Should they act in the narrow interests of their parties; in the fear of losing their seats if they upset their constituents, or in the overwhelming interests and safety of the UK?

There is no doubt about the first and foremost duty of MPs, overwhelmingly agreed by Parliamentary precedent and practice.

As published by our Parliament the role and duty of MPs is clearly stated by two leading authorities on the subject, the 18th Century Parliamentarian Edmund Burke, and Britain’s greatest 19th Century war leader, Winston Churchill.

In Edmund Burke’s Speech to the Electors of Bristol on 3 November 1774 he said:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion …

“Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.

“You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.”

And on 26 March 1955, a few days before he tendered to Her Majesty his resignation from the office of Prime Minster, Sir Winston Churchill spoke about the duties of a Member of Parliament:

He said:

“The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain.

“His second duty is to his constituents, of whom he is the representative but not the delegate.

“Burke’s famous declaration on this subject is well known.

“It is only in the third place that his duty to party organization or programme takes rank.

“All these three loyalties should be observed, but there in no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.”

We have heard that a number of MPs have received death threats by people who disagree with the way they are speaking and voting. That is reprehensible, and entirely unacceptable.

As the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow made clear  yesterday:

“The sole duty of every Member of Parliament is to do what he or she thinks is right.”

Please support your MP to do what they believe is right for the country. That’s their first and foremost duty, regardless of your opinion, or mine.

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The post Brexit: Support your MP to do what’s right appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

For younger readers, Millwall FC garnered much public interest in the 1980s for their forthright style of football and their supporters, whose chant of “nobody likes us, but we don’t care” resounded around stadiums (and punch-ups). Yes, things have moved on, but still the label has hung around.

Theresa May hasn’t yet got into any fist-fights, but she does seem to have adopted the F-Troop motto in these dying days of Article 50.

And they are dying days. With scarcely a week left, there is much talk of an extension, but the EU27 have been clear that re-negotiation of the Withdrawal Agreement remains off the table, so this is essentially about whether the UK signs up or shoves off.

May’s strategy of “my deal or no-deal” has led her inexorably to the current place and as last night’s televised statement showed, she has now reached a point of not even trying to sell the Agreement on its merits, but rather as the only way out of the impasse she has had a large part in creating.

Impressively, she appears to have turned some MPs that might have come round to supporting her in a Meaningful Vote 3 into much more vociferous opponents than before. The entire structure of her statement was that it was the Commons’ fault that delays had occurred and were to blame for it all: an odd strategy ahead of a vote early next week that would unlock the short Art.50 extension she had asked for just earlier that day.

And it’s not only the Commons that May doesn’t appear to be trying to charm. The EU too has been deeply unimpressed by her management of the extension request itself.

It has been clear for several weeks that an extension was necessary, and it’s always been clear that European Councils can’t make decisions there and then – especially if, as here, there’s been no prior discussion of positions – so to leave a request until 24 hours ahead of the meeting was always a recipe for further delay. Further complicate that by, a) not clearly asking for one particular length of extension, and b) more importantly, offering no justification for the extension other than a vague hope that “this time it’ll be different” on the Meaningful Vote, and it’s no surprise that the Commission and EU27 are spitting feathers.

This is all the odder for May’s approach hitherto of asking the EU to do her a favour in Art.50: this is such a slap in the face to them and makes granting an extension all the more difficult that one has to wonder what’s going on in Number 10.

As ever, I resist the “she’s stupid” explanation, because that neither helps us very much nor does it actually fit the evidence.

Instead, this all speaks to two general ideas.

The first is that May hasn’t got a Plan B. In keeping with the rest of her political career, she has set on a course and she will stick to that come hell or high water, unless and until she absolutely is forced to abandon it. And remember, that was an approach that didn’t always work, but did work enough to get her into Number 10, so the chances of her changing that model now are minimal.

The second is that nobody else has a viable plan. As much as it’s bad politics for May to tell everyone that they have no choice to do do as she wishes, it’s also apparent that everyone else is struggling to build up an alternative path through all this that might command broad support.

Yes, the choices still remain the same: revocation, deal or no-deal, with a side order of extension to delay having to choose among these. But none those combinations is the clear challenger to May’s approach.

The EU can’t do much more than set out conditions for an extension and hope the UK complies; Parliament can’t decide if it wants to take control of the process and, even if it does, where it might go; Tories talk a lot about removing May, but don’t do it; Cabinet is unhappy, but passive.

All of which brings us back to Millwall’s latest signing.

The post The Millwallisation of May’s Brexit strategy appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Falck Rettungsdienste and Falck
Freedom of establishment
Public procurement rules do not apply to services for the transport of patients provided, in emergency situations, by non-profit organisations or associations

Commission v Italy
Environment and consumers
Italy has failed to fulfil its obligations under the directive on the landfill of waste as regards 44 landfill sites