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Fishermen on Scotland's west coast say they face being wiped out by the drastic cuts to their quotas being put forward by the European Union. Skip related content Related photos / videos EU Ban Could Sink Fishing Trade Unions say dozens of coastal communities are under threat from the proposed changes which are expected to be confirmed in Brussels. EU scientists have called for a complete ban on fishing for cod, haddock and whiting - the three main white fish stocks - because their numbers are now so low off the west coast of Scotland. And while that could drive...

<p>GENEVA (AP) - Islamic proposals to ban criticism of religion, which have gathered strength since the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad two years ago, threaten to derail an already troubled U.N. anti-racism conference planned for next year. The European Union rejects suggestions by Algeria—backed by other Muslim and African countries—that limits on free speech are needed to stop the publication of offensive articles and images.</p>

STRASBOURG (AFP) – The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the EU's climate change package, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, lifting the last hurdle to the ambitious plan. Six texts on the package, already agreed by the 27 European Union member states, were passed by a large majority of the MEPs present. "We have sealed the climate package," said European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering, after the vote. The so-called "20-20-20" climate package, which Europe hopes will serve as a model to other nations, will oblige EU nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent...

PRAGUE, (AFP) Czech President Vaclav Klaus hit out at the EU climate deal concluded Friday and described global climate issues as "a silly luxury." "I do not like the way they forced it", Klaus said shortly after an agreement was announced in Brussels. He also claimed that his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy had "pushed" the deal so that it would not be left when the Czech Republic takes over the EU presidency from France on January 1. "This is scandalous," he said. "We should have been able to discuss it during our presidency, to force it now is not very...

"Belgian police arrest Al Qaeda terror suspects," from Agence France-Presse, December 11 (thanks to Alex): AFP - Belgian police on Thursday arrested 14 suspected Al-Qaeda members, including a man believed to have been planning a suicide attack, officials announced, as EU leaders gathered in Brussels. "We don't know where the suicide attack was to take place," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. "It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can't be ruled out that Belgium or

And now for a world government By Gideon Rachman Published: December 8 2008 19:13 | Last updated: December 8 2008 19:13 I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible. A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already...

The world sorely needs an economic revival. Where will it come from? If history is any guide, entrepreneurs will help lead the way. The truly radical or disruptive technologies and business processes that drive economic prosperity -- whether in information technology so far, or in clean energy in the years to come -- are most likely to be commercialized by entrepreneurial firms. Yet, as important as the formation and growth of new firms clearly are, there have been no officially sanctioned, internationally comparable entrepreneurship indicators. Until now. Last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), working with the...

Representatives of two European church groupings, in a meeting with a senior representative of the French presidency of the European Union, expressed concern about the rights of minorities around the world, especially where Christian minorities are persecuted, and discussed “the dramatic situation of Iraqi Christians whose extinction would signify a major injustice”. Representatives of Churches in Europe (Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community – COMECE, and Conference of European Churches – CEC) had talks in Paris on November 21 2008 with French state secretary for European affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet. CEC is a group of about 120 Orthodox...

France's sports minister, Bernard Laporte, warned on Thursday (27 November) that English football pre-eminence was getting out of hand and that Brussels needs to referee the situation. "We see European competitions between participants of two or three nations," he told a two-day summit of EU sports ministers. "Where is the uncertainty in such a sporting contest?" English clubs have been in the last four finals of the UEFA Champions League, winning twice and runners up three times. Critics in France and in UEFA complain that lax financial rules in the UK allow teams to borrow heavily to attract more top...

PRAGUE — In the 1980s, a Communist secret police agent infiltrated clandestine economics seminars hosted by Vaclav Klaus, a fiery future leader of the Czech Republic, who had come under suspicion for extolling free market virtues. Rather than reporting on Marxist heresy, the agent was most struck by Mr. Klaus’s now famous arrogance. “His behavior and attitudes reveal that he feels like a rejected genius,” the agent noted in his report, which has since been made public. “He shows that whoever does not agree with his views is stupid and incompetent.” Decades later, Mr. Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the...

The European Union is costing Britain a staggering £106,000 a minute, a think-tank has revealed. As the UK teeters on the brink of what experts predict will be the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Government has surrendered £55.8billion to Brussels this year. That is equivalent to paying a whopping £900 for every man, woman and child in the country. Cutting back on payments to the EU could fund a 6p cut in income tax, according to a hard-hitting report by the Eurosceptic Bruges Group. They branded it a 'scandal' that Britain was contributing so much money...

WASHINGTON, DC, November 12, 2008 (ENS) - When the leaders of the G20 countries gather in Washington this weekend for a special summit on the global financial crisis, pressure will be on to seek solutions in the growth of a new green economy. Today in Washington, Gary Gardner and Michael Renner, senior researchers with the environmental research organization Worldwatch Institute, issued a detailed proposal that they hope will focus the attention of the G20 leaders on what they are calling a "Global Green Deal." "The challenge for global political leadership, including U.S. President-elect [Barack] Obama, is not merely to kickstart...

PRAGUE (AFP) – Central Europe's top power producer, Czech-based CEZ, is pinning hopes on the financial crisis to thwart the approval of the EU's green package, saying it would hit hard at the region's coal-dependent industry. The EU's climate-energy package seeks to raise the share of renewable sources in power production by 2020, boost energy savings and tighten the rules for trading in CO2 emission permits in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Martin Roman, CEZ chairman and chief executive, said in an interview with AFP that a "yes" vote on the package from EU members in the region...

BRUSSELS (AFP) – European Union leaders fought growing pressure Thursday to roll back their climate change plans, standing by their targets and timetable for the package as the financial crisis bites. After Italy and Poland brandished the threat of a veto if their reservations were not taken into account, Germany, Europe's largest economy, also voiced concerns over the ambitious environmental plans. "I can confirm that the objectives remain the same, the calendar remains the same, now it's up to (us) to find solutions for those countries that expressed concerns," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said. "The climate package is so important...

Representatives of German business have called for a moratorium on any European Union legislation that would impose higher costs on companies at a time when they are grappling with the fallout from the financial crisis. Two of Germany’s largest trade bodies said Brussels should think carefully about putting additional burdens on business given the potential of the financial crisis to weaken the “real economy”. “We’ve got to ask whether certain measures, including environmental legislation, are responsible given the economic outlook,” Hanns-Eberhard Schleyer, general secretary of German Confederation of Skilled Crafts (ZDH), told the Financial Times. The call for a legislative...

Traditional light bulbs are to be banned from 2010, EU energy ministers have decided. The high energy filament bulbs are being phased out in order to improve energy efficiency and meet climate change targets. The switchover, which will affect all of the European Union's 500 million citizens, was first ordered at a Brussels summit last year as part of an ambitious energy policy to fight climate change. A meeting of EU energy ministers, including the UK's new secretary of state for energy and climate change Ed Miliband decided to go ahead with the ban. The move has previously proved controversial....

BRUSSELS, August 21, 2008 (C-FAM) - A recent report from the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) of the European Union (EU) has called for binding EU regulations that would equalize the legal status of married heterosexual couples with that of same-sex and opposite-sex couples across Europe. It also recommends policies aimed at "promoting visibility of homosexuality and other gender identities" and criminalizing homophobia through "hate crime" legislation. FRA contracted writing of the report to a group called FRALEX. FRALEX is roughly the same group as the now defunct EU "network of independent fundamental rights experts," a group that was widely criticized...

Come back! We were just kidding! We don’t hate you, really! So will come the supplications from the once-proud democracies of Europe. Turns out America as the world’s lone superpower might not be so bad after all. As Russian fascism re-emerges, transmogrified into what one might euphemistically call a “Corporate State,” and China’s leaders show no signs of taking their boots off of their citizens’ faces, the brave soldiers for democracy of the traditional European states are ready once again to hide behind America’s broad back. Of course, the nascent republics that budded off of the USSR sought shelter with...

A declining Europe must focus on the nitty-gritty By Leif Pagrotsky Published: August 14 2008 19:20 | Last updated: August 14 2008 19:20 At this time of failures in Iraq and on Wall Street, when the US has lost its role as model and inspiration for policymakers and others around the world, a golden opportunity has arisen for Europe to offer an alternative to look up to and find inspiration from. But Europe is not in good shape. It is not just about the Irish vote. The Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty in June is merely a scapegoat for...

Let him run for president of Germany. I mean, he's a citizen of the world, after all. If he wants to play act at being president, and he needs some country to lord it over, let him try Germany. Because we sure don't want him here. We don't want a man whose limited experience should give him humility, but whose ego demands supremacy. We don't want a man who thinks that because he has the audacity to speak at the Brandenburg Gate that he should have the authority to do so. In this cult of personality which has developed around...

Patients will be able to escape NHS queues by demanding treatment anywhere in the European Union without the prior approval of a doctor, under proposals to guarantee health rights unveiled today in Brussels. The NHS would then be duty bound to refund the British cost of the procedure under the new rules for cross-border healthcare. Today’s proposed EU directive will give patients in all 27 member states the same rights to treatment on the NHS as British patients. It also guarantees that the full cost of treatment abroad will be refunded when an NHS professional has agreed that it...

European Union lawmakers agreed to cap airline emissions blamed for climate change as of 2012, EU officials said, ending an internal deadlock over draft legislation that the U.S. opposes and may cost the industry billions of dollars. The accord by European Parliament and government negotiators adds EU and foreign airlines in January 2012 to Europe's emissions-trading system, which imposes carbon-dioxide quotas on businesses and requires those exceeding their limits to buy permits from companies that emit less. The plan covers flights to and from the 27-nation EU's airports, said three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because national governments...

Whether out of hubris or principle, or both, the United States has not understood its support for international law and institutions to imply a surrender of its own commitment to self-government. As the international system became more powerful, and international law diverged from U.S. law, the United States inevitably began to show unilateralist tendencies -- not simply out of self-interest but because the United States is committed to democratic self-government. The continental European democracies, with their monarchical histories, their lingering aristocratic cultures, and their tendency to favor centralized, bureaucratic governance, have always been considerably less democratic... The American and French...

STRASBOURG, France, JUNE 18, 2008 (Zenit.org).- As European Union member states consider the quandary created by Ireland's "no" vote to the Lisbon Treaty, the Holy See's representative at the Council of Europe says it's a sign that Europe needs to rediscover its roots. Monsignor Aldo Giordano, named earlier this month as the permanent observer of the Holy See to the Council of Europe, spoke Sunday with Vatican Radio about Ireland's June 12 referendum that put the Treaty of Lisbon in limbo. The treaty needs unanimous approval from the Union's 27 member states for it to go into effect. The prelate...

STRASBOURG: European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to allow countries in the bloc to hold undocumented migrants in detention centers for up to 18 months and ban them from EU territory for five years. Approved in this medieval French border city, which is home to a significant population of North Africans and Turks, the legislation establishes common rules for expelling foreigners who are detained on EU territory without permission to be there. Described by critics like Amnesty International as "severely flawed" and an erosion of human rights standards, but by supporters as a balanced approach, the so-called return directive passed in...

Ministers insist other countries must ratify deal despite Ireland's 'no' vote Germany and France moved to isolate Ireland in the European Union yesterday, scrambling for ways to resuscitate the Lisbon Treaty a day after the Irish dealt the architects of the EU's new regime a crushing blow. Refusing to take Ireland's 'no' for an answer, politicians in Berlin and Paris prepared for a crucial EU summit in Brussels this week by trying to ringfence the Irish while demanding that the treaty be ratified by the rest of the EU. The scene is now set for a major clash between the...

Irish voters struck a blow for democracy in Europe this week, stopping a power play by the Continent's political elites. On the ballot was the Lisbon Treaty, which European Union grandees in Brussels pitched as a tidying-up exercise to make the bloc's institutions work better. Most everyone else saw Lisbon for what it really was: An attempt to sneak through a dolled-up version of the failed "EU Constitution." That constitution was hailed as Europe's entrée to a U.S.-size presence on the world stage, complete with a nonelected president and a beefier defense and foreign policy. It was rejected by French...

Voters in Ireland could scupper the controversial EU treaty, a poll suggests. The survey, just days before the referendum, found that the 'No' vote had surged into the lead for the first time. Of those polled, 35 per cent said they would vote to derail the Lisbon Treaty on Thursday - double the number three weeks ago.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union defense ministers agreed Monday to keep the bloc's 2,500 peacekeepers in Bosnia, citing concern that tensions in Kosovo could spill over into other parts of the Balkans. "The region is not yet fully stable," said Slovene Defense Minister Karl Erjavec, who chaired the meeting. "It is necessary to continue being present militarily." Some EU nations had hoped that growing stability in Bosnia would allow them to pull the troops out, leaving just a police and civilian mission. However, the failure of Bosnia's ethnically based political parties to agree on a new constitution and the tensions...

Poland calls for stronger EU military By Judy Dempsey Published: April 24, 2008 WARSAW: In a major shift in policy, Poland, long considered a close ally of the United States, wants the European Union to beef up its military role by having its own independent planning headquarters and more say over military issues, according to the Polish defense minister. "We are in favor of a much stronger role for European defense, and that would include a military headquarters," said Bogdan Klich, who was appointed defense minister last year when the party of Donald Tusk, Civic Platform, defeated the nationalist-conservative government...

Europe’s growing ability to dictate global regulations and business practices is worth watching A regulatory war has erupted between the European Union and the United States. Just ask executives at Microsoft. In mid-January, they were forced to set aside their whiskey sours and golf clubs and dig out their pinstriped suits and law books when EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes initiated a new antitrust investigation into the goliath of American companies. Kroes’s January 14 announcement was salt on an already painful wound for Microsoft. Barely three months had passed since the American behemoth caved in and ended its opposition to...

BRUSSELS (AFP) - Power companies in just five EU nations could reap windfall profits of up to 71 billion euros over five years thanks to Europe's emissions trading scheme, the green group WWF claimed Monday. The environmental group, which released the findings of a sector study, said the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) gives no incentive to move away from the most polluting coal-fired power stations and warned that Poland and other eastern European members were lobbying against a planned overhaul of the system after 2012. At the root of WWF's gripe is the free distribution of polluting permits to...

London - You might want to take that vacation in England just as soon as you can – before its 1,000-year run as a sovereign nation comes to an end. This winter, 27 nations of the European Union (EU) signed the Treaty of Lisbon. You may think, "Innocuous enough," as Portuguese-inspired visions of the Tagus River and chicken piri-piri swirl before your eyes. But for England (Britain, actually) the Treaty of Lisbon isn't that appetizing. That's because, if ratified, it will become the decisive act in this creation of a federal European superstate with its capital in Brussels. Britain would...

BRUSSELS - European Union leaders threatened the United States and China with trade sanctions Friday if the world's two biggest polluters don't commit to ambitious cuts in greenhouse gases by next year. The warning came as the economic downturn focused European leaders on the impact on industry of their groundbreaking agreement last year to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. EU leaders want similar commitments from other major economies by next year, when a conference on global warning is to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark. Otherwise they say European companies will need protection from unfair...

Explosive EU MEP Corruption Report We have just been sent the explosive summary of the internal EP Audit Report on EU parliamentary assistance allowances. It has never been released to the public, but we were able to obtain a copy. The audit, which the EU has refused to release because it shows rampant malfeasance, was based on a random sample of 167 payments of the 4,700 total payments made to MEPs in October 2004. Yes, we would have expected a 2004 audit report to arrive in a more timely manner, but remember the auditors had to track down the 167...

KIEV, Ukraine, March 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A committee of the Ukrainian Parliament is calling for a halt to the popularization of homosexuality that has become such a prominent feature of life in western European and North American societies. The Committee on the Issues of Freedom of Speech says the state must oppose the increasing promotion of "homosexualism, lesbianism, other sexual perversions, which do not correspond to moral principles of the society". The Committee's report said, "Propaganda and expansion of homosexuality in the country form a threat to national security, contradict national interests and undermine the authority of rights and...

Plans to create a powerful new European Union “Interior Ministry” under the new Lisbon Treaty will be agreed in secret by Brussels officials over the next four or five months without any public or parliamentary scrutiny. The new Reform Treaty resurrects proposals from the old EU Constitution, rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago, for a “Standing Committee on Internal Security”, already known as COSI in euro-jargon. The final blueprint for COSI’s extensive powers will be agreed during the second half of this year […] The Treaty text, Article 61D on page 77 […] baldly states that: “A...

Everybody’s homework assignment this week is, first, to absorb Parag Khanna’s breathtaking revisioning of the United States in the world, and, second, to add your comment on the late great American Empire. Can it have come and gone so fast? Parag Khanna will join us in class with James Der Derian, the master of global security and media studies at Brown, on Thursday afternoon. Parag Khanna: Who Shrunk US Power? Parag Khanna’s scorecard-lineup of the “post-American world” is more striking for appearing counterintuitively in the safe, smug New York Times Sunday magazine. Five years ago in the same spot, Michael...

EU court: downloaders can stay private By AOIFE WHITE, AP Business Writer 50 minutes ago   BRUSSELS, Belgium - Record labels and film studios cannot demand that telecom companies hand over the names and addresses of people suspected of breaking European copyright rules by swapping illegal downloads, the EU's top court ruled Tuesday. But European Union nations could — if they want to — introduce rules to oblige companies to hand over personal data in similar cases, the European Court of Justice said.The court upheld Spanish telecom company Telefonica SA's right to refuse to hand over information that would...

Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — and almost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush,...

Discussions about Google's plan to buy DoubleClick raised the question whether an IP address is legally private. Europe's top data protection officials are working to clarify a grey area of Internet law: the legal status of an Internet Protocol (IP) address. The question of whether an IP address should be considered private data occupied much time at a hearing last week at the European Parliament regarding Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick. If a person can be identified by an IP address, then the address is private, said Peter Schaar, the German data protection commissioner and chairman of the Europe-wide privacy...

Brussels demands thousands more wind turbines across the UKBy DAVID DERBYSHIRE - More by this author » Last updated at 00:38am on 22nd January 2008  Windmills will change the skyline but can now be sited in the valleys   Britain will be forced to build thousands more wind turbines in the countryside under a Brussels edict to be announced tomorrow.   Energy experts say new EU climate change targets mean the UK will have to generate 40 per cent of its electricity from green sources within 12 years. In order to meet that target, the number of wind turbines on...

PARIS, Dec. 13 -- European leaders on Thursday signed a new treaty that in most member countries will never go before the public.

Bucharest and Brussels, 16 Nov. (AKI) - Romania, one two countries accused by Europe's top human rights watchdog of hosting secret CIA jails used to interrogate Islamist terrorism suspects, says it has written to the European Union executive denying the charges. The letter to the European Commission is a response to a request from EU justice and security commissioner Franco Frattini asking Romania and Poland - the other country implicated by the Council of Europe - for an explanation. A Romanian spokeswoman in Brussels, Doris Mircea, said that a committee of inquiry set up by the government concluded that the...

Italy starts rounding up Romanian immigrants By Malcolm Moore in Rome and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels  Last Updated: 3:07am GMT 03/11/2007     Italy has begun rounding up thousands of Romanian immigrants for deportation after passing a new "public order and security" law. Death of Italian woman brings tensions to crescendoMasgras Neculai, 30, a petty thief, was named as the first Romanian who would be expelled under the new law, which allows anyone who is considered "dangerous" to society to be sent home.   Police in Rome have begun rounding up Romanians   The law was rushed through the Italian...

It's a hardy perennial in the more philosophically-oriented conservative circles, despite its manifest political infeasibility: the argument that the Seventeenth Amendment should be repealed or should never have been passed. While this argument does have its virtues, I disagree. Regardless of whether it was a good idea at the time, repealing the 17th Amendment today would only weaken the mechanisms that are essential to conservative policies and conservative philosophy. Specifically, restoring to state legislatures the power over the election of Senators would make the Senate less directly accountable to the people and insulate the federal courts even further from public...

One of the greatest injustices to the victims of racism, and in particular the holocaust, is the trivialization of it. One does not have to agree with the Dutch “Islamophobic” anti-immigration politicians Geert Wilders or Rita Verdonk, but what kind of person writes something like: “Whenever I see people such as Wilders and Verdonk I think of the Kristallnacht! The moment the Jews were rounded up...”? People who write such things do not care about the suffering of the Jews. They merely abuse the Nazi crimes for their own petty political objectives. The example quoted above comes from the Dutch...

  PM: Surrender to EU ‘brilliant’ Celebrations ... Gordon Brown From GEORGE PASCOE-WATSON Political Editor, in Lisbon GRINNING Gordon Brown joined in champagne celebrations yesterday after surrendering huge swathes of British power to Brussels for good. The PM hailed the Great British giveaway as a “brilliant” deal as he took part in a back-slapping party with EU leaders. He once again ruled out a referendum for the British people – as Tony Blair became hot favourite to be the EU’s first permanent President with a £250,000-a-year salary and an army of officials funded by the taxpayer. He was backed...

The Prime Minister heads to Lisbon on Thursday to finalise the contents of the document with other EU leaders. After private talks with Foreign Secretary David Miliband in Luxembourg yesterday, Portugal's Europe minister suggested it was a done deal. Manuel Lobo Antunes said: "The UK is happy with this text. They made an important intervention in favour of the treaty so I don't see any major problems." ...[Gisela Stuart] dismissed the Government's much-vaunted 'red lines' - giving it a series of exemptions from the treaty - as 'red herrings'... And she warned Mr Brown against creating a 'contrived row' over...

The new think tank the European Council on Foreign Relations hopes to steer the European Union back onto the center of the world stage. Its 50 founding members include leading European intellectuals such as Timothy Garton Ash, Joschka Fischer, Brian Eno and Rem Koolhaas. The European Union is 50 years old this year, and two years into its mid-life crisis; ever since the resounding French and Dutch "no" votes against the European Constitution, the bloc has languished in stagnation, paralyzed by indecision and a lack of confidence. "The EU continues to underperform on the world stage," wrote former German Foreign...