The Theory Is Clear As The devil Has The Best Tunes
Posted by Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W) on 16/10/2014
The Theory Is Clear As The devil Has The Best Tunes
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is what gives the remaining 10% a bad name!
The Theory Is Clear As The devil Has The Best Tunes
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The departure of the Latvian MEP pushed the group below its quota (Photo: europarl.europa.eu)
Farage’s eurosceptic EP group falls apart
Today @ 17:00
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By Valentina Pop
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BRUSSELS – A narrow grey hallway on the seventh floor of the European Parliament was buzzing with journalists on Thursday (16 October).
In a small office, a young assistant was barely coping with ringing phones, emails, and knocks on the door, all wanting to know when her boss, Iveta Grigule, will be back or make a press statement.
“I simply don’t know. She is not here and I doubt she’ll be back before next week,” the assistant said.
The unusual attention for the Latvian MEP was due to the fact that earlier that day, Grigule resigned from the eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group, which led to the break-up of the faction.
Any EP group needs to have a minimum of 25 members from at least seven different countries. The EFDD, formed mostly of members of the UK Independence Party and Italy’s Five Star Movement, had scraped together one MEP from the Czech Republic, France and Latvia, and two MEPs each from Lithuania and Sweden.
A meeting of political leaders chaired by EP president Martin Schulz on Thursday took note of the group breakup following Grigule’s resignation.
In a press statement, EFDD claimed Grigule was “blackmailed” by the leaders of the two largest groups – the centre-right European People’s Party and the Social-Democrats – in order to get the chairmanship of the EP-Kazakhstan delegation.
“Concerning her resignation, Ms Grigule told the secretary general of the EFDD group that ‘I had to do it to get elected’,” the EFDD statement reads.
The now-defunct group also complained that its members are being “systematically excluded from their expected positions in EP delegations and chairmanships under the D’Hondt system which is the normal practice over many years.”
Both the EPP and the Social-Democrats rejected the accusations.
“It is not true that the EPP pressured Grigule in any way. She approached us for support for the chairmanship of the EU-Kazakhstan delegation and we said no,” said Pedro Lopez de Pablo, spokesman of the EPP group.
His colleague from the Social-Democrats, Jan Bernas, also said there was no such “blackmail”.
“When she realised she couldn’t get the chairmanship, she quit. But there was absolutely no pressure from us or anybody else,” Bernas told this website.
A spokesman for EP chief Martin Schulz, also accused of blackmail, said that the accusations are “unfounded.” He also suggested Grigule herself wanted to leave the eurosceptic group.
“President Schulz met yesterday with MEP Iveta Grigule on a request coming from the MEP herself. MEP Grigule informed President Schulz that she intended to leave the EFDD group,” Schulz spokesman John Schranz wrote in an emailed reply.
According to EP sources, the pro-Russia stance of Ukip leader Nigel Farage may have played a role in the Latvian’s decision, whose party, the Latvian Farmers’ Union, is in government coalition talks back home.
“In Latvia, there is no left or right, there are only pro-Russia and anti-Russia parties,” an EP source quipped.
With the loss of his group, Farage, who recently said that migrants to the UK should be tested for HIV, will lose speaking time, a seat in political leaders’ meetings and millions in funding money allocated to groups. In 2013, his group received €2.6 million.
But while many pro-EU politicians openly applaud the breakup of “Farage’s group”, they also worry that this will spur once again the French far right leader, Marine Le Pen, into having another go at forming a group of her own.
Back in the summer, Le Pen failed to gather MEPs from enough countries because Farage beat her to it.
As for the 17 MEPs from Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy, several of them are expected to join the Greens.
A spokesperson for the Greens told this website that the group hasn’t received any formal applications yet, but that they are “open” to such moves.
“There have been lots of ongoing informal contacts since the elections and any of our MEPs have already established good working relations with the 5 Stelle members in different EP committees,” the spokesperson added.
But one sticking point remains Grillo’s clear anti-EU discourse, which contradicts the pro-EU views of the Greens.
Eurosceptic MEP group collapses

A Eurosceptic group in the European Parliament (EP) that includes Britain’s UKIP and Italy’s Five Star Movement has collapsed after an MEP withdrew.
The development means a loss of funds and less influence for the parties in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group.
The EFDD accused EP President Martin Schulz of engineering Latvian MEP Iveta Grigule’s exit from the group.
Speaking to BBC News, Mr Schulz’s office denied any wrongdoing.
The office said that after meeting Mr Schulz on Wednesday, Ms Grigule had brought her letter of resignation from the group to his office on Thursday morning.
Consequently, leaders of the European Parliament decided that the EFDD had to be dissolved, the office told the BBC.
To qualify as a group, parties must represent at least seven countries and Ms Grigule’s departure had reduced the EFDD to six.
‘Massive blow’
Ms Grigule, an MEP for the Latvian Farmers’ Union, has applied to Mr Schulz to become an independent MEP.

Analysis: Chris Morris, BBC News, Brussels
According to one source in the European Parliament, the EFDD group was due to get just over 4m euros (£3.2m; $5m) in funding in 2015 – more than 80,000 euros per MEP in the group.
For UKIP, with 24 MEPs, that’s more than 2m euros of revenue hanging in the balance. Half of it usually goes to the communications budget – a valuable resource in an election year.
If Mr Farage is no longer the leader of a group, he will also get less speaking time in the parliament, and fewer opportunities to make speeches on big set-piece occasions.
UKIP alleges that the Latvian MEP who has left the group was bullied into submission by parliamentary leaders but she is so far unavailable for comment.
A UKIP statement accused the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, of acting like he was running the parliament of a “banana republic”. But without a formal political group, UKIP will be a less powerful voice in Brussels.

Nigel Farage said his party had been the victim of a back-room stitch-up and he accused Martin Schulz of “effectively blackmailing” Ms Grigule by offering her the leadership of an overseas delegation. That, he said, was how the British got treated in Brussels.
The EFDD’s collapse has also forced MEPs to postpone a decision on the winner of the Sakharov Prize for 2014 until next Tuesday, for administrative reasons.
UKIP’s 24 members made up half of the 48-strong EFDD group.
They were followed by Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement which had 17 MEPs. Other members included the Sweden Democrats, one French independent, and MEPs from the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
Eurosceptics made major advances at the European elections in May, with the EFDD gaining an extra 17 seats.

News of the EFDD’s fall was welcomed by the largest group in the parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which tweeted: “First defeat for Eurosceptics! EFDD group disappears with departure of Latvian Iveta Grigule.”
The leader of the UK Labour Party at the European Parliament, Glenis Willmott MEP, said Nigel Farage had suffered a “massive blow”.
Mr Farage has predicted UKIP could hold the balance of power in the UK following the general election next year after his party gained its first elected MP last month and narrowly failed to take a seat from Labour at a by-election.

Why being in a group is better
- Non-attached MEPs – collectively called “NI” in the parliament – cannot be heads or deputy heads of EP committees or delegations
- Groups have more power than NI members to draft legislation and steer it through parliament
- NI members cannot table group amendments or motions for resolutions at full EP sessions
- MEPs in groups have more staff than NI members, who are excluded from the total 59.8m euro (£48m; $76m) pot allocated to groups to cover their administrative expenses
- Average budget for NI members is 43,000 euros each.

EU BLACKMAIL: EP Prez Schulz Forces Farage’s Euro Group to Fold, Denying £Millions to UKIP
UKIP’s European Parliamentary group, the ‘Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy’, has collapsed today as a single, Latvian member holding the group together walked out. UKIP sources believe the move was intentionally orchestrated by the socialist President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz.
Breitbart London understands that Iveta Gringule, the sole representative of the Latvian Farmers Union, resigned from the EFDD group this morning, meaning that the strict criteria for forming a political group set up by the European Parliament is not met.
Groups must have representatives from 7 different EU member states, which the EFDD no longer does. Speculation now abounds as to whether 17 MEPs from the Italian 5 Star Movement will find another group.
The news will come as a serious blow to UKIP who have been doing well in domestic elections in the UK.
Ms Grigule, the sole Latvian MEP in the EFDD group, signed her letter of resignation in the office of the European Parliament President Mr Schulz this morning. He later told the Conference of Presidents, the committee of the Parliament’s group leaders, that the EFDD had folded.
Concerning her resignation, Ms Grigule told the secretary general of the EFDD Group that “I had to do it to get elected.”
She told the General Secretary of the EFDD Group that the EPP chairman Manfred Weber and European Parliament Martin Schulz told her she must resign from the EFDD Group in order to attain the presidency of a European Parliamentary delegation to Kazakstan – a move that some have called “blackmail” by the EP President.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage and EFDD Co-Chairman responded to the news saying: “If we are correct in our understanding about the events, President Schulz would be more suited to being the president of a parliament in a banana republic. It would seem he has exceeded his role that should apply to a neutral chairman or president of a parliament. I believe this is an example of political bias on an extraordinary scale.”
There will now be speculation about whether UKIP MEPs will be forced to sign up with political parties it had previously wanted to avoid, such as the French Front Nationale. Sharon Ellul-Bonici, Secretary General of the European Alliance for Freedom, a pan European party which includes Marine Le Pen, said “UKIP will have to be seen with the other ‘bad fellas’ in another group with far right elements or still sit next to them as Non-Attached.”
She added that she was “not surprised” about the collapse of the group, saying that she felt Ms Grigule was not to be trusted.
“She promised us that she would take all her meetings to the board [of her party] and decide [whether to join the EAF group]. Forty five minutes later she signed for Nigel [Farage].
“I knew then that she was not to be trusted.”
As Co-Chairman of the group, UKIP leader Nigel Farage was a member of the influential ‘Conference of Presidents’ committee as well as having a front row seat in plenary next to the European Commission President Mr Juncker.
Perhaps more concerning will be the loss of the group structure which provides research and administrative staff for the group of MEPs as well as funding for political campaigns and publicity in the home countries of the MEPs.
The funding, which runs into the millions, will mean that previously successful events and campaigning tools, such as information booklets to every household in Ireland during the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and conferences which highlighted the work of the MEPs will now be in jeopardy.
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Greg_L-W..
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