European Union

The Czech Republic’s Communist party (GUE-NGL) and the Christian democrats (EPP) would not reach the country’s 5% electoral threshold and not make it into parliament in a general election, according to a new poll conducted by Kantar for Czech Television....

Polish municipalities which have adopted resolutions on “LGBT-free zones” will not receive money from Norwegian funds, Norway’s diplomacy ministry has informed. The allocation of funds has already been the subject of a dispute between Oslo and Warsaw. This is non-refundable...

Rarely does the death of a judge, let alone a foreign one, make headlines in Greece. But in the case of Ruth Bader Ginsburg – the US Supreme Court justice who died at the age of 87- both traditional media...

Meeting the EU’s proposed new climate targets for 2030 will require a “transformation” of the bloc’s energy system, with a renewed focus on renewables and further efforts to cut fossil fuels in buildings, transport and industry, the European Commission has said.

Facebook has claimed that it is unsure how it can continue to provide services in the European Union, following a recent order from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for the firm to freeze data transfers to the United States....

Finland’s Green party wants to carry out a comprehensive research on the country’s legislation currently criminalising cannabis due to the changing attitudes and new facts on the matter, adding that it is high time to review the legislation, according to...

The EU wants all Turkish drilling vessels and warships to move away from Greece and Cyprus in order for dialogue to begin, an EU official has said ahead of today’s meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers. EU foreign policy chief...

In a letter dated 2 June, József Magyar, deputy secretary of state for development of European affairs at the ministry of foreign affairs and trade, asked Hungarian embassies in the European Union to provide information about the professional visits of...

The United States will sanction more than two dozen people and entities involved in Iran’s nuclear, missile and conventional arms programs, putting teeth behind UN sanctions on Tehran that Washington argues have resumed despite the opposition of allies and adversaries.

The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, according to new research. EURACTIV's media partner, The Guardian, reports.

Vil Mirzayanov, a scientist involved in the secret Soviet program to create the Novichok nerve agent, has apologised to the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who is recovering from poisoning in Berlin, The Moscow Times reports. "I offer my profound apologies to Navalny for the fact that I took part in this criminal business, developing this substance that he was poisoned with," Mirzayanov said in a TV interview.

Thousands of people attended a protest on Sunday in the western German city of Dusseldorf against government restrictions imposed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, Deutsche Welle reports. The organisers had expected as many as 50,000 people would attend, but only a few thousand joined the protest. There were banners with slogans such as "End to panic, coronavirus is a lie."

British banks Barclays, Coutts, and Lloyds are to stop serving UK customers resident in the EU at the end of the year because it will become illegal to do so in the absence of a new post-Brexit deal on financial services, The Sunday Times reports. Lloyds told 13,000 customers in Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovakia they will terminate accounts by the end of the year.

Some 12 out of 37 areas of Madrid to undergo new lockdowns on grounds of rising infection rates have held protests saying they were unfair because they targeted mostly areas with a lower per capita income and higher migrant populations, the BBC reports. "No to a class-based lockdown" banners said in the suburb of Vallecas. A regional health chief said he would shut down the whole city if need be.

EU foreign ministers will have nothing to show Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya when they meet her in Brussels on Monday, after Cyprus blocked sanctions.

The European Commission sealed a second Covid-19 vaccine deal, amid fears over the fair distribution of supplies worldwide. So far Brussels has secured, or is negotiating, a stock of nearly two billion doses.

A German court just heard crucial witness testimony about Syria's state torture programme - in the first such trial of its kind in the world.

Migration and foreign policy will take centre stage next week, as the EU tries to come to a common position on Turkey, China, Russia and the sanctions on Belarus.

Mark Rutte's comment is the first time the leader of an EU country has publicly considered the possibility of the EU integration project continuing without recalcitrant states.

Believe it or not, Conservatives used to be the party of Europe.

Indeed, it was:

• The Conservatives that joined the UK to the European Community.
• The Conservatives that advocated and helped to design the EU’s Single Market.
• The Conservatives that encouraged the former Communist countries to join.

It was also one of the Tory party’s greatest leaders, Winston Churchill, who promoted the cause of a united Europe as the antidote to war on our continent.

It was 74 years ago today, on 19 September 1946, that Churchill gave his landmark speech at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, when he called for a united Europe as the way to guarantee peace.

His aim was to eliminate the European ills of nationalism and war-mongering once and for all. He proclaimed his remedy, just one year after the end of the war:

“It is to re-create the European family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom.

“We must build a kind of United States of Europe.”

The European Economic Community was formed on 25 March 1957 with the signing of the Treaty of Rome by the six founding European nations: France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Just four months later, at London’s Central Hall, Westminster in July 1957, Churchill gave a speech welcoming the formation of a “common market” and stating:

“We genuinely wish to join…”

From then onwards, every Conservative Prime Minister strongly endorsed Britain being a member of the European Community – with the notable exceptions of the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and his immediate predecessor, Theresa May.

Hardened Eurosceptics were always previously on the far side-lines of the Conservative party. But now, they’re in charge, with Mr Johnson at least pretending to be one of them (he wasn’t always).

This month last year, 21 Conservative MPs were sacked because they rebelled against the UK crashing out of the EU in a catastrophic no-deal Brexit.

Those no longer welcomed included Sir Nicholas Soames, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill.

Sir Nicholas had been a Tory MP for 37 years, and like his granddad, is a passionate supporter of a united Europe.

His sacking shockingly demonstrated that the new Europhobic Tory party could no longer tolerate pro-EU members in their midst.

Although Boris Johnson restored Sir Nicholas to the party a few weeks later, he decided not to stand again as a Conservative candidate.

A few months before the EU referendum, Sir Nicholas gave an impassioned speech in the House of Commons, remembering his grandfather’s address in Zurich, which he described as a speech of “great prescience and great vision.”

Sir Nicholas extolled the European Union’s remarkable achievement in bringing us:

“peace, stability, freedom and security unprecedented in a thousand years of European history.”

He added:

“It is a very great credit to our country that we should have played such a leading role in seeing this through.”

But his message, along with that of his grandfather, Sir Winston Churchill, is now off-message.

Can the Conservative Party ever be the same again? Their pro-Europe legacy has been shattered.

• Related article by Jon Danzig: Winston Churchill: A founder of the European Union
• Watch this extract of Churchill’s speech of 19 September 1946 and his grandson’s tribute to it in the House of Commons.

• Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
• My campaign page on Facebook: Reasons2Rejoin
• And LinkedIn

________________________________________________________

• Share this article on Facebook:

→ Churchill’s landmark speech of 19 September 1946 – 6-min video WINSTON CHURCHILL CALLED FOR A UNITED EUROPEBelieve…

Posted by Jon Danzig on Saturday, 19 September 2020

 

The post Tory legacy shattered appeared first on Ideas on Europe.