European Union

Economic trends and security are set to dominate debates at the 34th session of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly in Haiti, starting on 18 December.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Economic trends and security are set to dominate debates at the 34th session of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly in Haiti, starting on 18 December.

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 7 December 2017, AFET/SEDE will hold an extraordinary joint hearing on North Korea to discuss the continuing deterioration of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. The aim of the hearing is to assess the threat posed by the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile build-up and possible consequences for the global non-proliferation regime. Members will also analyse different options for the EU and international community to prevent further escalation of the crisis.
Further information
Draft programme
Hearing documents
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 7 December 2017, AFET/SEDE will hold an extraordinary joint hearing on North Korea to discuss the continuing deterioration of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. The aim of the hearing is to assess the threat posed by the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile build-up and possible consequences for the global non-proliferation regime. Members will also analyse different options for the EU and international community to prevent further escalation of the crisis.
Location : Altiero Spinelli 5E-2
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 7 December 2017, AFET/SEDE will hold an extraordinary joint hearing on North Korea to discuss the continuing deterioration of the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. The aim of the hearing is to assess the threat posed by the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile build-up and possible consequences for the global non-proliferation regime. Members will also analyse different options for the EU and international community to prevent further escalation of the crisis.
Location : Altiero Spinelli 5E-2
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Liga van Moskeeën en Islamitische Organisaties Provincie Antwerpen and Others
Agriculture and fisheries
According to Advocate General Wahl, the requirement for ritual slaughtering without stunning to be carried out in an approved slaughterhouse does not infringe the right to religious freedom

REPORT on a European Parliament recommendation to the Council, the Commission and the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on Hong Kong, 20 years after handover
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Alyn Smith

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

David Davis only last March said we’d never pay anything like a £50 billion settlement to leave the EU. Boris Johnson said the EU could go and whistle for the money. Priti Patel said the EU should be told to sod off.

During the referendum campaign nobody was told anything about the cost of leaving the EU. We were only lied to about all the money we’d reclaim – including the nonsense that the NHS would get an extra £350m a week.

And yet here we are. We’re going to pay a large amount to leave the EU because those are our obligations. We can’t wriggle out of the payments we signed up to whilst a member.

The EU stood firm, whilst Mrs May and her hapless team of Brexit ministers huffed and puffed and let months go by living in denial.

The reality of Brexit is now sinking in fast.

And here’s the oddest thing. The UK government is negotiating to leave the EU, just so they can negotiate another arrangement with the EU to give us as much as possible of what we’ve already got, but on considerably inferior terms.

Does it make any sense?

No. It doesn’t. The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the net annual membership fee of £8 billion a year.

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost 50% of our exports go to and over 50% of our imports come from. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

The UK government is desperate to continue to enjoy similar membership benefits of frictionless trade with the EU after we have ended our membership, because they know that our economy’s survival depends on it.

But the UK government has said it wants to continue to enjoy membership benefits as an ex-member, without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union, without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market, without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules, and without paying anything to the EU for access.

It’s not going to happen. Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum she said clearly and loudly, “It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

Yet that’s exactly what Mrs May now wants. She says she aims to achieve a new trade agreement with the EU that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

Of course, it’s not going to happen. In two words, it will be the EU telling us to ‘sod off’.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

So here’s the bottom line. Britain needs frictionless trade with the EU. We need free movement of goods, services, capital and people for our country not just to survive, but to thrive. We need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now.

Has this sunk in yet?

We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left.

We’re going to pay around £50 billion – money that will come from us, you and me – to try and achieve what we’ve got, but less of it, and on considerably inferior terms.

This is complete and utter madness. It will be much better to just keep the current arrangement. It will be cheaper, and we will all be better off.

As an EU member:

• we have a say and a vote in the running, rules and future direction of our continent;
• we have full and free access to the world’s largest free marketplace;
• we enjoy the right to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent;
• we enjoy state healthcare and education when living and working in any other EU country;
• we enjoy free or low-cost health care when visiting any EU nation;
• we are protected by continent-wide rights that protect us at work, when shopping and travelling;
• we benefit from laws that protect our environment (and have, for example, directly resulted in Britain’s beaches being cleaned up);
• we enjoy excellent EU trade agreements with almost 60 countries, with more on the way, on advantageous terms that Britain is unlikely ever to replicate.

So, we’re going to pay £50 billion to throw that all away, just so we can get an inferior arrangement with the EU, in which we’d still have to agree to the rules of EU trade (over which we’d have no say) and we’d have less access to our most vital customers and suppliers outside of our home market.

And what are we gaining? Surely something?

No. All the reasons given to leave in last year’s referendum were based on lies and false promises. There are no good reasons to leave.

More sovereignty? Nonsense. We’ll get less. In the EU, we gain a share of sovereignty of our continent. Outside the EU, we’ll still live on a planet and have to obey thousands of international laws and treaties. We share sovereignty with NATO, for example. Is that a reason to leave it?

Fewer migrants? Really? Just think about it.

Most EU migrants in Britain are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do. So if they all left, we’d have to replace them with about the same numbers of migrants as we have now to get all those jobs done. What’s the bloody point of that?

More houses, schools and hospitals? Think again. Without EU migrants we’ll have fewer builders, teachers, doctors and nurses. Migrants are not the cause of our problems. Blaming them just excuses successive UK governments from investing sufficiently in our country.

Get our country back? We never lost it. If being in the EU means losing your country, why aren’t the 27 other EU member states complaining?

Our own laws? The vast majority of laws in the UK are our laws and passed by our Parliament in Westminster.

But in the EU, we benefit from laws for our continent that no single country alone could ever achieve. Could our UK government have got mobile phone companies to scrap mobile roaming charges across the entire EU? Of course not. It took the might of 28 EU countries working together to achieve that, and so much more.

The EU is run by faceless bureaucrats? Another lie. The EU is run and ruled by its members, the 28 countries of the EU, along with its democratically elected European Parliament. The European Commission is the servant of the EU, not its master, and the European Parliament has the power to choose, and dismiss, the entire Commission.

We are leaving for no good reason, not one. We are paying £50 billion to leave. We will be poorer, and with less sovereignty, fewer rights and protections, and restricted trade, and diminished power after we’ve left.

What’s the point? There’s no point. The country really has gone nuts.

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The post Britain’s road to insanity appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

DRAFT OPINION on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council providing further macro-financial assistance to Georgia
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Andrejs Mamikins

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

REPORT on the Annual report on the implementation of the Common Security and Defence Policy
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Michael Gahler

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

REPORT on the Annual Report on the implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy
Committee on Foreign Affairs
David McAllister

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

REPORT on the Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World 2016 and the European Union’s policy on the matter
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Godelieve Quisthoudt-Rowohl

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Bilde v Parliament
Law governing the institutions
The General Court upholds the decision of the European Parliament to recover from Dominique Bilde MEP the sums paid for the employment of a parliamentary assistant on the grounds that she had not proven that work was in fact carried out by that assistant

King
Freedom of movement for persons
A worker must be able to carry over and accumulate unexercised rights to paid annual leave when an employer does not put that worker in a position in which he is able to exercise his right to paid annual leave

VCAST
Freedom of establishment
The making available of copies of television programmes saved in the cloud must be authorised by the holder of the copyright or related rights

What a bloody nuisance Parliament is to the Tory government these days, when all the Prime Minister wants to do is get on with Brexit.

If only Parliament would stop interfering, she and her fellow Brexiter Ministers could make much more progress.

Ditto the law.

I mean really, why do we need Parliament and the law when we have such competent people as Theresa May and David Davis?

Honestly, all they want to do is to completely transform Britain to make it a much better country for … well, for all their rich mates, who hanker for a low-tax, low-regulation Britain.

For God’s sake, they want THEIR country back. Is that too much to ask?

Theresa May grabbed at the chance to become the Prime Minister to make Brexit happen.

Yes, ok, she told the country just weeks earlier that leaving the European Union wouldn’t be in the country’s best interests. But, so what?

Becoming Prime Minister was the opportunity of a lifetime. Nobody in their right mind would turn down such a great career move.

Principles? Don’t be stoopid. Her first, then party, then… well that’s it.

The referendum was advisory only and not even a majority of the electorate wanted it, let alone Scotland and Northern Ireland (did I mention nuisance? What a nuisance they’ve become, eh?)

Will of the people! Sounds a bit hollow when most people didn’t actually vote for Brexit. But hey, keep repeating it and the mantra will stick.

Will of the people! Will of the people! Brexit means Brexit! Brexit means Brexit! It’s going to be red, white and blue!

Who says you can’t fool most of the people most of the time?

Look, why does Parliament have to be involved in this when ‘the people’ have spoken?

Of course Theresa May wanted to get Brexit passed without bothering Parliament with the finer details… or actually most of the details.

You can’t blame Theresa May for calling upon the ancient, arcane Royal Prerogative to get Brexit done without the say-so of Parliament.

I mean, Theresa May almost IS royalty. She’s Tory! Blue to the finger tips. Almost certainly blue blooded too.

Cold blooded? All the better. I mean, namby-pamby human rights? Another bloody nuisance. Don’t get me started!

Look, Theresa May, the clever girl, almost got away with it. Passing Brexit by bypassing Parliament. Did Parliament complain? Don’t make me laugh.

Most MPs and Lords and Ladies wanted Britain to stay in the EU. But that advisory referendum soon shut them up, didn’t it? Look who’s sovereign now!

If only that Gina Miller hadn’t interfered. Of course the High Court was wrong. Of course Mrs May was right to spend millions of pounds of our money to fight the ruling that went against her.

Such a surprise that those judges in the Supreme Court ruled that Mrs May’s cunning plans to skip Parliamentary process would be illegal.

What do they know about the law anyway? Enemies of the people!

Did I say Theresa ‘almost’ got away with it? Slip of the keyboard. She DID get away with it.

Parliament didn’t get to vote on a bill for Britain to leave the European Union.

David Davis told Parliament it wasn’t necessary. They could skip that bit because the decision to leave the EU had already been made by THE PEOPLE!

Sshh. I mean, please. Keep this to yourselves. David Davis was lying. Yes, lying to Parliament.

The referendum wasn’t capable of making any decision. It was advisory only. Not legally binding.

So who has made the official, legally-binding, pukka decision to leave the European Union?

Well, um, nobody! Isn’t it wonderful? Britain is leaving the EU without any proper sanction. Did I say Theresa was clever?

Some lawyers are working right now to challenge in the courts that Britain is almost certainly leaving the EU illegally.

But please, don’t encourage them. They need a lot of money to take their case forward. It will just prove to be yet another bloody nuisance to Mrs May’s plans.

You do want her to be successful in transforming Britain forever, don’t you?

Another clever wheeze of this amazing Tory government is the way they’re getting Parliament to vote to transfer all EU laws and protections into British law.

Then, no need for any more Parliamentary involvement.

Government ministers will be free to keep, amend or scrap those laws and protections without the interference of Parliament. It’s called Henry VIII clauses. Good old Henry.

Did I type protections? Another keyboard slip. Of course Tory ministers won’t want to keep protections after Brexit. Don’t you have any understanding of what this is all about?

Yes, it’s important to pay lip service to Parliamentary democracy. Keep them busy, I say. Yes, yes, Parliament can have a say on the final Brexit deal. Why not?

The choice is take it or leave it. Deal or no deal, we’re still leaving the EU.

Parliamentarians will be allowed to vote on whether they like the final deal or not. But like it or not, it won’t make any difference. Brexit, here we come!

That David Davis, he likes to boast a bit, but he’s doing a grand job, don’t you think? He blustered to Parliament, and on the telly, that he’s prepared 58 Brexit impact reports.

Of course they have to be kept secret. If people found out the truth about Brexit, they might not want it anymore.

(That’s why David has to keep saying, “There must be no attempt to remain in the EU, no attempt to re-join by the backdoor and no second referendum.”)

But you can see how Parliament got in the way again. Bloody Parliament!

They voted to see those 58 impact reports. Why on earth do they need to see them? What business is it of theirs? Really.

Well, you can’t blame David for saying that well, those impact reports, they don’t exist. He has to protect the integrity of his exit department, and to ensure Brexit goes ahead, come what may. (Come what May, get it?)

But Parliament insisted. The vote was binding. The Speaker of the House said so (little man in a big chair. Do we really need him? Really?)

So, good old David has done the honourable thing and handed over the documents. He’s a jolly good fellow!

Yes, ok, to protect the country from knowing the truth about Brexit, he and his team had to spend the night blacking out all the sensitive bits with a huge felt tip pen. Actually, hundreds of felt-tip pens. Why not?

Heaven forbid. If people got to see that information, the Brexit game would be rumbled. Seriously.

David says it’s because the information would damage his negotiations with the EU. Good one, David!

(Just a hint: try not to squint your eyes so much when lying. It’s just too much of a giveaway.)

Of course, the EU already know everything there is to know. They openly published dozens of Brexit impact reports months ago. Brexit is going to be a disaster. That’s what the blacked-out bits say in David’s secret reports. That’s why he cannot possibly publish them.

Duh! Don’t you get that?

Amazing that this Tory government doesn’t even have a majority in Parliament. In June’s general election, Theresa May asked for a landslide to get a mandate for her Brexit plans. Instead, she lost her majority entirely.

But she hasn’t lost the plot. She’s carrying on as if the general election hadn’t happened.

Contempt? Oh, it’s much more than that. It’s a coup. The cleverest, sneakiest coup you could ever imagine.

Parliament, and the people, are asleep whilst plans are being made without them.

Let’s hope nobody wakes up too soon. We don’t want any more bloody nuisances getting in the way of Brexit, do we?

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AFET will host Albania's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Ditmir Bushati to discuss the country's EU-related reforms. With the date of the future opening of the EU accession talks looming large, Members will examine Albania’s efforts to overhaul judiciary, tackle corruption and drug trade, improve internal political dialogue and ensure good neighbourly relations.
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 4 December 2017, the Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the "Prospects for Libya in the current regional context". The hearing will assess the current political and security situation in Libya and the prospects for the stabilisation of the country, ahead of the two-years deadline of the Libyan Political Agreement.
It aims to discuss what role the EU should play in order to support the UN-led political negotiations as well as the interests and roles of different regional and international players.

The panel will consist of the chargé d'affaires of the Libyan Mission to the EU, Mr Mohamed Farhat, and of two experts, Mr Karim Mezran, resident senior fellow of the Rafik Hariri Centre for the Middle East in the Atlantic Council, and Mr Mattia Toaldo, senior fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations. The discussion of this hearing will feed into the recommendation on Libya that the European Parliament is due to adopt in the coming months.
Location : European Parliament, Jozsef Antall (JAN) building, room 2Q2, Brussels
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP