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Wednesday, July 2, 2014

First debate in the new European Parliament Tuesday July 01,2014


  • EPP - European People's Party (centre-right)
  • S&D - Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in Europe (centre-left)
  • ALDE - Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (liberal)
  • GUE/NGL - European United Left-Nordic Green Left (left-wing and Eurosceptic)
  • Greens/EFA - Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens and regionalists/nationalists)
  • ECR - European Conservatives and Reformists Group (right-wing)
  • EFDD - Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (Eurosceptic)
  • NI - Non-attached (stands for "non inscrits" - MEPs not in any group, includes many Eurosceptics or anti-EU)

The new European Parliament has begun its first session and elected German Socialist Martin Schulz to a new term as parliament president.
He got 409 votes in the 751-seat chamber, after his Socialist S&D bloc backed the conservative Jean-Claude Juncker to be Commission president.
Mr Juncker's EPP bloc, the biggest in parliament, voted for Mr Schulz in a deal giving him a 2.5-year term

The first debate in the new European Parliament has exposed sharp divisions

UKIP leader Nigel Farage mocked the way Jean-Claude Juncker was chosen to be European Commission chief.Nigel Farage now has a 24-strong UKIP team in Strasbourg - compared with nine MEPs before

As in the Eurovision Song Contest, "it doesn't matter how good the British entry is, we're always going to lose", he said.
Green MEP Philippe Lamberts hit back, asking him: "What are you doing here?"
He said Mr Farage's Eurosceptic speech belonged in the House of Commons, not in the European Parliament.
Nigel  Farage - whose UK Independence Party won the European election in the UK - compared Mr Lamberts with "somebody from the old communist era", intolerant of contrasting opinions.
In France the anti-EU National Front won the election and its leader Marine Le Pen told MEPs on Wednesday that "a new wind is blowing in this hemicycle [debating chamber]".

Ms Le Pen said that "trying to tell people their vote really counts just makes them laugh" and she attacked the "very obvious collusion" between the dominant pro-EU parties. Her nationalist party is not allied with UKIP.
Liberal group (ALDE) leader Guy Verhofstadt clashed with both UKIP and the British Conservatives.
He mocked the Conservatives' ideas about changing the EU, saying "I call it blocking all progress... abandoning all common European policies".
"That's not change, that's regression. No! What does conservative mean? If anything it means the status quo."
Guy Verhofstadt wants closer European integration, spearheaded by the European Parliament - a vision fundamentally at odds with the UK Conservatives' demand for a renegotiation and repatriation of powers to nation states.

 

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