The National Platform EU Research & Information Centre ☚

“Ireland entered the euro in 1999 and lost control of the two vital monetary instruments: setting interest rates and setting currency exchange rates. Had Ireland remained outside the euro, its bankers would not have gained access to the euro zone’s vast and low interest borrowing opportunities. Without the outlandish credit [...]

“The member states whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole. The granting of any required financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality.”
- Amendment to Article 136 of [...]

“By the end of the summer Angela Merkel and I will be making joint proposals on economic government in the eurozone. We will give a clearer vision of the way we see the Eurozone evolving. Our ambition is to seize the Greek crisis to make a quantum leap in Eurozone government…The very words were once [...]

JOIN THE DEMONSTRATION  AGAINST THE  “EU RE-DEDICATION RITES” OUTSIDE THE DÁIL,  MONDAY  9 MAY, FROM 12.30 TO 2:00PM
Ireland’s Euro-fanatics and ultra-Europhiles are getting panicky.
As the European Central Bank turns us all into indentured debt peons for a generation and France and Germany plan assaults on our 12.5% company tax rate, they fear that Ireland’s long [...]

Statement from the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, March 2011
1. FIANNA FÁIL DOWN, FINE GAEL AND LABOUR STILL TO GO
One big party – Fianna Fáil -  that supported Ireland’s blanket Bank bailout, the EU/IMF stitch-up last December,  the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty which abolished the Irish púnt,  and every other [...]

The Irish Times - Friday, March 4, 2011 (letters)

Madam, – Dr Garret FitzGerald (Opinion, February 12th) shows concern that moving away from the so-called “community method” of making EU laws towards a more “inter-governmental” approach may open the way to an EU that “for the first time becomes dominated by some [...]

It is the Supreme Court, not the Government or its Attorney General, that has the power ultimately to decide whether a referendum will be needed in Ireland if Germany, backed by France, insists on changing the EU Treaties to suit its interests.
Little more than a year since the EU Heads of State and Government assured [...]

JENS-PETER BONDE
(EUObserver/Comment)
24 July 2009
The German Constitutional Court issued a remarkable verdict on 30 June. It was described in the press as the Court’s approval of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.
However, careful reading of the judgement shows that it is a fundamental rejection of the core constitutional content of the Treaty.
The Court judgement modifies the [...]

Every year some 120 Belgian ambassadors abroad come to Brussels for an information day. This year foreign Minister Karel De Gucht outlined the priorities for the Belgian EU presidency, the second half of 2010. He especially wants to combat the tendency of the bigger EU countries to dominate.

☞ EU directive could open up faith schools to non-believers
Plans drawn up by the European Union to combat discrimination would allow non-believers to send their children to faith schools and could pave the way for gay marriage in church.

Excerpts from the meeting between Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, and members of the Conference of the Presidents of the European Parliament, Friday 5 December 2008, Prague Castle:
Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP: I brought you a flag, which - as we heard - you have everywhere here at the Prague Castle. It is the flag [...]