Leo van Doesburg

There will be terrible times in the last days.   People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy   without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. (..), always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.(..). But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone. You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance” ( 2 Timothy 3: 1-10) The year 2013 is almost finished. The year is characterized by changes. One of the most important changes I saw this year was a growing public awareness of the general public concerning the importance of protecting basic Christian-Democratic values like human dignity...

On December 1, the people of Croatia voted in favour of the natural marriage. The outcome of the referendum in Croatia is clear: 65.8% of voters chose to preserve marriage as a union of a woman and a man, by asking their government to recognize this as such in the Croatian constitution, while 33,5% voted against. The referendum was called for by the Croatian Citizen initiative "In the Name of the Family" by collecting more than 700,000 signatures. On the 27th of November, the European Christian Political Foundation (ECPF) co-hosted a roundtable on this referendum in the Croatian Parliament. Maria Hildingsson (FAFCE) and Heiner Studer (President EVP, former MP Switzerland) addressed Croatian MP’s with their views on marriage (Hildingsson) and referenda (Studer). We are pleased with the choice of the majority of Croatian citizens and urges the Croatian government to facilitate this clear wish of the population as soon as possible. Please find below the press release of E...

ECPM calls on EU member-states to respect the fundamental freedoms of conscience, faith and speech against the growing trend of imposed ideology. ECPM: ,,The EU Charter of fundamental rights should be respected by its governments”

”Do you think that the Constitution should define marriage as a union between a woman and a man?” was the question that within 15 days gained about 20% of voting population′s support, or exactly: 749.316 signatures. Although this should be more than enough to legally call for a national referendum, this action faced a lot of pressure from different sides. Please read here an article written by Slavko Vukmanov, member of the Croatian political party HRAST and his personal impressions about the actions and pressure they faced:

Tomorrow, 4 December, parliamentarian elections will take place in Croatia. I have been several times in Croatia. The country faced quite a turbulence in their political situation. The corruption, difficult economic situation and also the accession to the European Union caused a lot of uncertainties for the people of Croatia (also shown by many demonstrations this year). This resulted in a decrease of trust in their leaders and parliament. However. I was very impressed by the new political party HRAST. This party is focused on basic Christian Democratic values and finds basic values like human dignity (protection for life from conception until natural death) and family values of main importance. However, this does not mean that they neglect other important areas. In October they organized an important conference about "Croatian economic perspectives" where the situation of the Croatian economy and the economic program of HRAST was discussed. Together with Dutch Christian U...

As a following up of the Balkan trip Auke Minnema and me went to Croatia to train the people of the initiative group there. After this we plan to go to Slovenia, the country we unfortunately could not visit the last time during our Balkantrip.

Croatians' scepticism of the European Union has been growing from month to month, with 41 per cent expressing themselves against membership in March. Over the last year an additional 1.1 per cent more Croatians have com e out against European Union membership, the latest CRO Demoscop survey shows. However, on balance public opinion remains in favour of joining with 48.9 per cent still supporting Croatia's entry. Support was at its strongest last June (53.1 per cent), and then dropped below 50 per cent for the remainder of the year. The strongest supporters of Croatia’s membershipare supporters of the conservative Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, (63.6 per cent), with members of the Croatian Labourers – Labour Party, the Croatian People’s Party – Liberal Democrats, HNS, the Social Democratic Party, SDP, the IDS the Croatian Party of Pensioners, HSU all marginally in favour of membership. Older Croatians are more positive towards EU membership than the younger generations, while t...

This morning we woke up earlier, because we would have a long trip today. We left around 08:00 hrs from the hotel where we stayed. A great place only two tram-stops from the center of Zagreb. It was nice weather although still quite cold and the temperature showed minus 7 degrees. However the weather soon became warmer and the environment changed and so did the weather. We quickly reached the coast and while we in the beginning of the trip were walking on ice and snow, now it was nice spring weather with a clear blue sky (with a temperature of around plus 13 degrees! A difference of 20 degrees between t he morning we left and the afternoon. Together with the beautiful surroundings, I thought already about the summer. The road was good, and we stopped in Dubrovnik to see the panorama of the city. After Dubrovnik we had to leave the highway and it took a long time before we reached Kotor, a beautiful city on the coast in Montenegro where we had our dinner. After the dinner we went furthe...

This morning we had a great meeting with a political initiative group. I was impressed that we were working with the same contact persons in Brussels. Also I liked their motivations and recognize also the same basis as the ECPM. We agreed to work together on some concrete activities like courses and trainings. It was sad that also in Croatia there seemed to appear only two opinions about the European Union: either to be very Eurofile or to be very Europhobic. No-one seems to give an honest, well-balanced and objective information about the Croatian accession to the European Union. With the expected referendum in Croatia about it's accession, this ca n turn out to have a negative impact in their society. Also there is a lot of fear because of the continuously ungoing lobby coming from the West for liberalistic laws that are against basic Christian values like the protection of life, promoting family values based on traditional marriage while 80% of the population see themselves cath...

This morning I could sleep a bit longer, because the car was being fixed in the morning. It was not that bad to have a bit more time for myself. Around 13 hrs we could leave to Zagreb. The car was fixed. The ventilator in the engine was broken but now the car should not have any problems anymore. We had a smooth trip to Zagreb via the highway. In the meantime I was preparing the topics we would discuss in the evening. We arrived around 15:30 hrs in our hotel that was nice and established in the center. I took the tram to the city to have the first meeting. Auke remained in the hotel , because he was quite tired. Ofcourse he was tired of the traveling, but he also woke up early to take care that his car was fixed well. However when that was going ok, he had to fight with the Dutch national automobile club (ANWB). When he closed the agreement with the ANWB, they were quite nice, but now there were problems, they will pay this time but showed a hesitation to care for us for the rest of ou...

This would be the last day that we are in Sarajevo. In the morning we had a meeting in the national parliament with a former member of parliament. We explained about our activities and for possible ways to collaborate. After this meeting we had a 1,5 hr break where we visited the remains of a tower, enjoyed a panoramic view of Sarajevo and drank a Turkish coffee on the central square. After this we went to the philosophical faculty where we had an appointment with the dean and vice-dean. We had a good discussion about Christian Democracy within the Bosnian context. The faculty was very interested to collaborate also with the European Christian Political Foundation for developing analysis etc. on topics related to Christian Democracy. It was now early afternoon and we went back to the "Residence" hostel that became a kind of home for us. The owners (a very energetic Bosnian man of 68 who is running with the luggage on the stairs and his wife who worked before in a diplomatic f...