Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-22-Speech-3-225"
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"en.20060322.17.3-225"2
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"Mr President, I have voted against the report and, together with 22 other Members of the last Parliament, I tried in vain to take legal proceedings against the notion of taxpayers contributing to European political parties. The parties are never anything other than artificial. There is nothing that can be voted on, there is nothing of which to become a member and there is nothing over which to obtain influence. The exception, curiously enough, is the EU Democrats, the new alliance for European parties and movements founded by critics of the EU. It is possible to log onto our home page, EUDemocrats.org and, in that way, join right off the street, free of charge, and be informed, as well as take part in the various events.
The rules applicable to the political parties discriminate against smaller movements, smaller parties and, for example, national minorities. These will never be able to achieve the status of European parties and obtain funding for activities that may be identical in every respect to the activities for which the larger political parties - in many cases the smaller groups’ competitors - obtain funding from EU coffers. The regulation on European political parties is discriminatory and thus unlawful in the ordinary course of things. Moreover, it is something that we cannot even have tested in the EU's supreme court. The regulation was adopted by majority decision in the Council of Ministers by people who all have financial interests in the outcome of the vote. What is more, the decision-makers are themselves members of the political parties that now take money from voters who vote for their political competitors in connection with decisions from which those competitors are excluded. The regulation is supported by a majority of the European Parliament, the majority of whose Members also, of course, have a financial interest in discriminating against troublesome minorities. None of the decision-makers perceives any problem in relation to competence. Nor do the decision-makers appreciate that they are offending against EU law’s principle of equality and the ban on discrimination.
My group wants to see the regulation abolished or at least modified so that everyone is placed on an equal footing when they, for example, carry out a cross-border activity for the purpose of disseminating information. Why should international conferences arranged by Social Democrats and Christian Democrats or, for that matter, EU Democrats be funded by EU taxpayers while 21 national minorities cannot obtain grants for debating perhaps exactly the same subjects at their own equivalent conferences. That is indefensible. It is clearly unlawful discrimination, and there should be equality for Loki as well as for Thor, as we say in Denmark."@en1
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