M.E. Synon - Page 4

In a slap-down of claims by Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg that Britain would be “isolated” if it left the European Union, one of China’s most senior economic figures has said it would make no

Despite determined tactics by the British Conservatives to stop it, the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group, the caucus in the European Parliament that has been the platform in Brussels and Strasbourg for Nigel Farage and the UK Independence

Many Spaniards are reported to be “outraged” and complaining of “Spanish Inquisition” that books on how to stop children being gay and how to cure homosexuality are on sale in Spain’s El Corte Inglés, the biggest department store group in

Former prime minister Sir John Major, the Tory politician who surrendered significant parts of the British Constitution to the European Union in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and turned Her Majesty’s subjects into “citizens of the EU,” yesterday lectured the Scots

The European Commission has borrowed €500m (£400m) in the capital markets to lend on to Ukraine, part of a €1.6bn (£1.3bn) programme of so-called Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) which is meant to draw the former Soviet bloc country closer into the

A Dutch Calvinist political party which denies the equality of women and which until 2006 banned women from party membership has now become a member of the British Conservative’s group (the European Conservatives and Reformists) at the European Parliament. In

Despite 26 million workers being trapped in unemployment across the European Union, member states have not yet shifted the burden of taxation away from workers and employment. Tax on labour remains the largest source of revenue in the 28-member bloc,

The Conservative Party strategy to cut away eurosceptic allies from Nigel Farage and UKIP has had another success in the European Parliament, with the single member of a Dutch party abandoning UKIP’s caucus and joining the Tories’ European Conservatives and

Between the late 1920s and early 1960s Ireland led the world in locking up people in mental institutions, with inpatient admission rates that were multiples of other countries, campaigners for mental health now claim.  The campaigners are demanding that the

In a unexpected echo of Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s right-wing Front National, a former French defence minister has condemned American influence on EU foreign policy, saying the EU should abandon NATO and stop “bowing to US policy.” As

In yet another political gift to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), British Prime Minister David Cameron has come out in favour of Albania becoming a member of the EU. The move will eventually allow free movement of people from that

Finland’s EU minister who is on course to become prime minister later this month may be ready to poke the Russian bear and take Finland into NATO.  The move by Alexander Stubb would end his country’s tradition of neutrality along its 800-mile

The EU’s energy commissioner has threatened politicians and journalists who campaign against his eco-policies, accusing them of stirring “anti-EU sentiment” and warning them that their opposition to his EU energy-savings directives will “not be taken lightly.” Günther Oettinger, a German

Prime Minister David Cameron appears to be losing his grip on tactics in his fight against the appointment of euro-zealot Jean Claude Juncker to the top job at the European Commission. Today saw the latest effort by the prime minister

Britain’s UK Independence Party (UKIP) may have dodged a bullet fired by the Conservatives straight at Nigel Farage. Members of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, the Italian anti-establishment, anti-EU party, voted to have their 17 members in the European Parliament

In another blow to French pride, the Italian government have decided not to bother using French on their official website when they take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1st. The website will

The Conservative Party, and more notably Prime Minister David Cameron, is set to fall on the wrong side of German Chancellor Angela Merkel after it emerged that their European Parliamentary grouping has grown beyond control and allied with one of

Vice-President Joe Biden has insulted Germany, the EU’s biggest economy and America’s most important ally in Europe, with a gratuitous and ignorant accusation that the German people are hostile towards immigrants and “xenophobic.” Offering no evidence, Biden told an audience

An official at the EU agency which directs €79bn (£64bn) in research funding has sent a stream of vulgar abuse to a Zionist NGO. Mattia Zilli, an official of the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency, wanted the rabbinic director of

The British Conservatives in the European Parliament have finalised the nomination of their candidate for the presidency of the European Parliament: a former Liberal Democrat, now Tory MEP who has mocked and insulted eurosceptics. Sajjad Karim, a Lancashire-born Muslim of

After that meeting in Sweden, it looks like David Cameron can’t even win a battle in a phoney war. It turns out the prime minister didn’t even raise the issue of Jean-Claude Juncker at a meeting of the leaders of

Tens of thousands of Basques held hands in a 76-mile long human chain on Sunday in a demonstration to demand the Spanish government allow let them to vote to break away and form their own country, according to an AFP

A court in Switzerland has ruled that the army was wrong to reject a recruit because he held far right-wing views. According to an ATS news agency report, the army rejected a recruit from the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino after

Landings of thousands of illegal immigrants from North Africa are becoming “dramatic and unsustainable,” and Italy and Malta say they have been “forgotten” by the rest of Europe amid a flood of migrants. At the weekend Italian, Maltese and American

Not for the first time a senior member of the Conservative party has demonstrated he does not understand how the European Union works. Worse, the Conservative in question, Andrew Lansley, the Leader of the Commons, is now favourite to be

After the triumph, the tragedy — or at least the stupidity: last month Marine Le Pen and her anti-establishment Front National topped the polls in the elections to the European Parliament, pushing the ruling Socialist party into third place and

Narendra Modi, the new prime minister of India, may be favourably inclined to address key concerns of the European Union over the restricted access to Indian markets, according to a report in the Indian Express. The EU and India began

Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, is now the most popular party in Ireland. A party once considered so toxic that the voices of its members, including party leader Gerry Adams, were barred by law from television

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has ruled herself out of becoming the president of the European Commission. Speaking in London yesterday at the presentation of the IMF’s annual assessment of the British economy, she said: “On

A report leaked to the British Tory press that Jean-Claude Juncker, the frontrunner to be the next president of the European Commission, was “dead drunk,” vulgar and aggressive in a meeting in 2007 when he was prime minister of Luxembourg raises

European Union officials have told a Lebanese newspaper they do not believe the Algerian-French gunman who allegedly murdered three people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and seriously injured another acted alone, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.

The European Union has lost control of its foreign policy to Washington and now “there are no independent states left in Europe,” Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s anti-establishment Front National, said in an interview with the Russian news channel