Leo van Doesburg

On Friday 4 th of March, the Justice and Home Affairs Council will meet to discuss and vote on the European Commission’s proposal to include hate speech and hate crime onto the list of EU crimes of Article 83 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). 

  Today is the European Day on the Protectionof Children   against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, an initiative by the Council of Europe. This year’s European Day focuses on preventing risky behaviour by children through child self-generated sexual images and/or videos. The COVID crisis has unfortunately exacerbated the problem of child sexual abuse, as the "EU Strategy for a Most Effective Fight Against Child Sex Abuse" highlighted.   Children are spending more time than before online, possibly unsupervised. While this has allowed them to continue their studies and not fall behind in the education process, there are signs that they are at an increased risk of encountering predators.   Actions to address these problems are therefore needed. To that end, on the 9th of December, ECPM Member of the European Parliament Helmut Geuking , as co-chair of the European Parliament Intergroup on Demographic Challenges, Family-Work Balance and Youth Transitions, will ...

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 ...

Hearing about the European Citizens Initiative “One of Us” in the European Parliament was a success Human Dignity and the protection of life are not political values but are inviolable and must be respected. “The issue is a simple and logical one: human life exists from conception and therefore should be respected. The European Court of Justice also defined that human embryo starts at conception.  The European Commission should be more consistent with this fact ”explained Gregor Puppink Director of the European Center for Law and Justice and leader of the European Citizens Initiative “One of Us” at the hearing which took place in the European Parliament last Thursday, 10 April. The hearing in the European Parliament had as main target to create a dialogue between the representatives of the Citizens Initiative that collected almost 2 million signatures and the Members of the European Parliament under the supervision of the European Commission that will give an answer on the ...

The European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI) “One of us” has announced today that is has reached the necessary signatures to be introduced as an official petition to the European Commission. The collection of signatures will go on until October 31 st . This ECI, which requires support by at least one million EU citizens from a minimum of 7 EU member states, is an official invitation to the European Commission to introduce a legislative change to suspend EU-funding of embryonic stem cell research. (Source:  European Dignity Watch)

Dr. Tonio Borg, currently Malta’s Foreign Minister, is his country’s nominee for the European Commission’s Health and Consumer Policy portfolio, a post recently vacated by John Dalli. With academic qualifications in administrative and human rights law, and decades of experience in his country’s Justice and Home Affairs Ministries, Dr. Borg is an ideal nominee. Dr. Borg is also a catholic Christian and, because of this, a coordinated campaign opposing his nomination is in full force. On 13 November, a three hours hearing of the Commissioner-designate will take place at the European Parliament (which has a quasi veto on the confirmations of new Commissioners). Under normal circumstances, there would be no reason for Parliament to doubt the nominee’s suitability for the post. But for weeks, a coalition of special interest groups and NGOs has been mounting an aggressive negative campaign against Dr. Borg.   (Source  European Dignity Watch ) ...

It was of course never to be expected that the European Commission, as a reply to critical questions from the European Parliament with regard to the generous funding it is handing out to ILGA-Europe (a homosexual lobby group), would openly acknowledge to have committed a misuse of budgetary funds. But if replies to parliamentary questions are evasive and not to the point, this can be viewed as a clear indication that the Commission finds it very difficult to explain to the public what it is doing. Click here for an interesting article with the official asked questions of MEP Godfrey Bloom to the European Commission, the answers of different European Commissioners. Unfortunately it shows a lack of transparency in spending money, a strange relations with the Civil Society and a low level of democracy. This all in times of economic crisis where lots of money seemed to be wasted.......  (Source: turtlebay and beyond)

As a reaction on the Green Paper of the European Commission concerning the automatic recognition of civil status documents (see the article on " Will the EU define marriage "), the European Humanist Federation did not comment to the questions asked by the Commission. Instead, the Federation is attacking the ECPM, CARE, Human Dignity Watch, the World Youth Alliance, and Salt and Light. Calling us: "efficiently organised and well financed but unrepresentative minority religious pressure groups whose aim appears to be to stifle the initiative at birth." And further: " It is our opinion that they are not representative even of most Christians in Europe. " Their reaction on the green paper you find here

The European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros , has closed a case after the European Commission apologised for omitting Christian holidays in a school diary it had published for 2010/2011. This follows a complaint from an Irish priest who submitted that the diary did not mention Easter and Christmas, although it contained certain non-Christian holidays, such as the Jewish and Islamic New Years. Irish priest complains about missing Christian holidays Every year, the European Commission produces the Europa Diary for students in secondary schools in the EU. It serves as a tool for homework and other notes. The edition for the school year 2010/2011 was distributed to more than three million students. In January 2011, an Irish priest complained to the Ombudsman that the Commission had omitted Christian holidays, such as Easter and Christmas, while including holidays of other religions in the diary. He claimed that the Commission should apologise for the error and recal...

The European Christian Political Foundation ( www.ecpf.info ) wants to draw your attention to a report done by European Dignity Watch ( www.europeandignitywatch.org ) on a new proposal from the European Commission regarding the automatic recognition of civil status documents that could lead to a situation in which the EU member states will no longer define marriage. Instead, member states could be forced to recognize forms of “marriage”, civil partnerships, same-sex adoption and other practices, even if these contradict their national laws and public order. European Dignity Watch issued an analysis of the Greenpaper, which you find below. The analysis is meant to facilitate answers that can be sent to the European Commission as reaction to the public consultation (Green Paper). The ECPM asks all decision makers on national and European level to take note of this report and take action in their own political body. If the ideas in this green paper would become EU policy, all action taken...

I was surprised to learn about the strong pressure on the Macedonian government following the adoption of the new anti-discrimination law that does not mention sexual orientation. It is interesting that these emotional discussions mainly base themselves on vague terms like “European values” and “European standards”. Even the European Commission reminded Macedonia that its anti-discrimination legislation should be in line with the “Charter of Fundamental Rights”, part of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. What was interesting was that the Charter was only used for Article 21 (where “Sexual orientation” is protected). The consequences for other rights like “the freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Art. 10 of the Charter) or for the “Freedom of Expression and information” (Art. 11 of the Charter) were mainly forgotten in these discussions. Furthermore I found it strange that the pressure did not start from Macedonian society, but mainly from abroad: from ambassadors, certain European Parliam...