Leo van Doesburg

The European Parliament; the European Commission; Brussels... What kind of thoughts cross Christians’ minds when they hear these words? Bureaucracy and costly? Unnecessary legislation that goes against freedom of religion, belief and conscience? Sometimes I wonder what has happened in Brussels over the last few decades. What has become of the Christian mindset that was so instrumental in the formation of the European Project? Where is the real problem? Maybe the problem is not with the European Union. Maybe the problem lies with the successors of the founding fathers of the EU. And how will Christian politicians be able to make their faith more visible in European politics?

On the 28th of May, the European Commission has to give an answer to the European Citizens Initiative "One of Us". Nearly 1.9 million signatures were collected to ask the European Union could stop funding the embryonic stem cell research and abortion in developing countries The left-liberal opposition against the "One of Us" was fierce and many arguments were used to neutralize the concern of so many European citizens. Main arguments were: One of Us is piloted by ultra-conservative, religious, anti-choice organisations One of Us is actually not a Citizens’ initiative but orchestrated by the Catholic Church and the East Orthodox churches One of Us” is the latest in the series of recent attacks on gender equality, women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights in Europe“One of Us” is  imposing their religious beliefs at any cost One of Us will be responsible of the death of thousands of women in developing countries One of Us wants to ...

Next week, the European Elections will take place. Over 413 million citizens of 28 EU-member states have the opportunities to elect 751 Members of the European Parliament.  Each member state has its own electoral laws and each one decides on what day its citizens will go to the polls during the four-day election person from 22 to 25 May 2014. The results will be announced on the evening of Sunday 25 May. But the interesting question is: who should we vote for? I got many questions like: I do not know which party or candidate in our country supports Christian values in Europe, I would like to know how my MEP who is running again voted on key issues like the protection of life, priority for the family (based on a union between a man and a woman) and freedom of religion or belief. Some interesting tools had been developed to give you some insight in these questions:  First of all, all the candidates of the ECPM supports these basic values as they are also mentio...