Press conference EU Religious leaders

12 July 2012



Intergenerational Solidarity was at the heart of this year’s annual summit meeting of European Faith leaders with the Presidents of the EU Institutions. This was the eighth such high-level meeting which took place at the invitation of President José Manuel Barroso and was co-chaired by Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council and László Surján, Vice-President of the European Parliament. Read more

.

Sarkzoy, Merkel invite Van Rompuy to head eurozone

EU president Herman Van Rompuy has been asked to chair a body of eurozone leaders (AFP/File, Georges Gobet)


(AFP) – 16 hours ago

PARIS — France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a joint letter Wednesday to EU president Herman Van Rompuy inviting him to chair a body of eurozone leaders.

The pair said they hope to strengthen coordinated financial planning within the 17-nation single currency bloc in the face of the current sovereign debt crisis and want the former Belgian prime minister on board.

"The euro is the foundation of our economic success and the symbol of the political unification of our continent," the zone's two most powerful leaders said, in a joint statement drawn up after they held talks on Tuesday.

"France and Germany propose to reinforce once more the governance of the eurozone within the framework of existing treaties," they wrote, proposing that eurozone leaders elect a president for a two-and-a-half year mandate.

"We have expressed our hope that you could assume this role," they added.

Eurozone finance ministers already meet regularly in what is known as the Eurogroup, and which is chaired by Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker.

European financial markets and the euro exchange rate have been gripped by uncertainty as one eurozone member after another has begun to struggle to cope with mounting government debt, threatening the unification project.

Markets had looked to Merkel and Sarkozy's Paris summit for reassurance, and many observers had hoped that they would endorse the idea of issuing a common "eurobond" to pool member states' debts.

But the pair stopped short of a measure that would have angered German taxpayers by giving them a greater share of the burden of supporting weaker economies like Greece, calling instead for tougher fiscal discipline.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso nevertheless called Tuesday's meeting an "important political contribution by the leaders of the two largest euro area economies."


Source
.

Australia's Gillard, EU's Barroso support closer relationship

EUXTV October 04, 2010

Ahead of the ASEM Summit, Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia and José Manuel Barroso, EC President stated they want to develop further the EU-Australia relationship.

Prime Minister Gillard proposed to create a treaty aiming at strengthening the cooperation between EU-Australia in research, development and innovation .

The EC President said he will examine those proposals in detail and consult Member States. 'We very much support the idea of giving more important expression to the relationship between Australia and the European Union', added José Manuel Barroso.

They also discussed topics for the preparation of the G20 in Seoul, South Korea. Issues such as the restructuring of IMF, financial reforms and economic governance were raised.
.

« Poverty is a challenge that the EU and the Churches must face together »

« Poverty is a challenge that the EU and the Churches must face together »

This was the appeal of Bishop Adrianus van Luyn, President of COMECE, to the EU leaders on the occasion of the 6th annual meeting of the EU Presidents with the Religious leaders in Europe, which was held on July 19 at the European Commission.

The meeting was hosted by José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission and co-chaired by Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council and Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament. It was dedicated to the fight against poverty and social exclusion. Around twenty senior figures from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions as well as from the Sikh and Hindu communities - coming from fourteen Members States - met to discuss the importance of combating poverty and social exclusion from the perspective of European governance.

Bishop van Luyn warned against adopting a way of fighting poverty that relies only on technical or administrative measures: "It will most probably fail to reach its goals: it confers on the poor the role of ‘objects of welfare'" he said. "On the contrary, what is needed is a way of helping poor people that will allow them to be ‘players' in the joint struggle with society against poverty and exclusion."

Appraising the efforts of the EU to overcome the economic crisis, he added "we can neither allow the poorest and the weakest in our society to become the victims of this crisis yet again, nor can we burden future generations with the task of cleaning up after our mistakes while failing to do anything ourselves."

This responsibility of the EU should also apply towards the poorest in the developing countries, especially in Africa, as well as to migrants: "We must not shirk the responsibility of joining forces to achieve the objectives concerning Poverty in the Millennium Development Goals" he concluded.

Cardinal Erdö, President of CCEE underlined that Poverty cannot be restricted to its material understanding but must be addressed in all its dimensions and this therefore raises an anthropological question for political and Church leaders on what exactly are the needs of a human being.

To overcome spreading individualism, Archbishop Zvolensky from Bratislava, called for "a concrete commitment to solidarity and charity, beginning in the family ". Quoting Pope John Paul II, he said "It is urgent therefore to promote not only family policies, but also those social policies which have the family as their principal object" (Centesimus Annus, 49).

Dr Flaminia Giovanelli, from Justice & Peace was the fourth representative of the Catholic delegation at this meeting. She mentioned that the Catholic Church supports and sometimes helps to create businesses that are between profit and non-profit companies, "a broad new composite reality embracing the private and public spheres, one which does not exclude profit, but instead considers it a means for achieving human and social ends."(Caritas in veritate 46)

President Barroso, Van Rompuy and Buzek all valued the contribution of Churches in the fight against Poverty, as they are important providers of social services in EU Member States. This summit meeting was the first held under the new Lisbon Treaty, which foresees in its Article 17 that the EU maintains "an open, transparent and regular Dialogue" with Churches and conviction communities. All three Presidents announced their intention to enhance the implementation of this Dialogue at a working level in the coming months.


Official pictures available here

List of participants


Article in Newspaper "La Croix" 19.07.2010:


Download the speeches of:
-Mgr van Luyn
-Dr Flaminia Giovanelli
-Mgr Zvolensky


Source: http://www.comece.org/content/site/en/euchurchdialogue/annualsummitmeetings/article/3579.html?SWS=e9af2612366115e1dcbcd331858c4500
.

Bilderbuggers

Posted by Stephen Gardner in categories EU Insider on June 9th, 2010

Journalists love the Bilderberg group because it has an air of secrecy and conspiracy. In fact, rather than anything very substantial, it seems to be largely a vanity project – people who think themselves very important gathering in an air of secrecy and conspiracy. Last week in the Commission’s press room there were questions about the possible attendance of José Manuel Barroso.

Barroso was not there at the June 3-6 meeting in Sitges, Spain. Three of his colleagues were however: Joaquín Almunia, Karel de Gucht and Neelie Kroes. At least that is what the Bilderberg website says – the group is getting a little less secretive it seems.

For all the secrecy and conspiracy (and public expense of getting the Spanish police out to guard the venue, though apparently Bilderberg refunds any such costs incurred), judging from the list of participants, Bilderberg seems to be a gathering of rather second division VIPs. Almunia, de Gucht and Kroes got to rub shoulders with a number of company CEOs, some journalists, and luminaries such as premier of British Columbia Gordon Campbell, president of Austria Heinz Fischer and Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou. Er, isn’t rubbing shoulders with these people what the Commissioners do every day anyway? Admittedly there were more important attendees, such as Bill Gates and famous war criminal (according to Christopher Hitchens) Henry Kissenger. Spanish PM Zapatero was there as well.

And of course Bilderberg is chaired by former EU Commissioner and the man who allegedly secretly runs Belgium, Etienne Davignon.

Bilderberg justifies its secrecy by stating that participants all attend in a personal capacity and it is therefore not a public event. So no doubt the Commissioners that attended all did so on unpaid days off, and travelled and accommodated themselves for the event at their own expense.

:

.

Source: http://blogs.euobserver.com/gardner/

.

EU Proposes Global Wealth Redistribution

Written by James Heiser
Thursday, 10 September 2009 18:30

Member states of the European Union may soon find that the joys of environmental self-righteousness quickly fade when the bill comes due. According to a report from BBCNews, the European Commission is proposing that the EU provide billions annually to poor countries for climate-change adaptation. Yet the amounts proposed are a relatively small part of what the United Nations says poor nations will need and are considered insufficient by environmental alarmists:

The UN estimates that poor nations will need about $100bn (£60bn) per year for climate adaptation, with much of that coming from levies on carbon trading.

The [European] commission hopes its proposal will stimulate negotiations leading up to December's UN summit in Copenhagen. Campaign groups say the sums are less than the EU ought to be spending.

"With less than 90 days before Copenhagen, we need to make serious progress in these negotiations," said commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

"I am determined that Europe will continue to provide a lead, but developed and economically advanced developing countries must also make a contribution."

The commission is proposing that the EU’s “share” of the $100 billion would be somewhere between $2 and $15 billion. Given the usual natural expansion of all governmental programs, one can easily imagine how such a figure will be adjusted upward time and again in the coming years if the precedent of making such transfers is established.

What must be understood is that what is being proposed is essentially a global welfare system that is inextricably linked to submission to the environmentalist ideology and administered by the United Nations. The entire program neatly combines several major tenets of the anti-Western creed: internationalism, radical environmentalism, and guilt-tripping over a history of Western/European “oppression.” It also means that even as the U.S. Senate is considering adoption of a “cap-and-trade” carbon-credit system which could further cripple the American economy, the United Nations is preparing to add its own level of carbon-credit taxation to further strip wealth out of the American economy and transfer it to “developing nations.”

With all welfare schemes, no matter how much wealth is transferred, the recipients — and their advocates — may be expected to lobby for more. Such is also the case with the proposed Copenhagen carbon-credit redistributionism. According to BBCNews:

Environmental groups have been pressing the EU to come up with a strong proposal, and were not impressed with the final figure.

"The EU is trying to get away with leaving a tip, rather than paying its share of the bill to protect the planet's climate," said Joris den Blanken, climate and energy policy director of Greenpeace-EU.

Environmental groups argue that western nations are historically responsible for causing man-made climate change, and so must bear the brunt of any "compensation money" for the developing world - a position that is shared by governments of many poorer countries.

Recently the African Union suggested that African countries alone should receive $67bn per year.

If $2 to $15 billion a year may be considered merely a “tip,” one may question what “bill” organizations such as Greenpeace-EU would like to see thrown at the European Union — and, in time, the United States. The bidding up of the price of imposing the environmentalist ideology on the entire world has only begun; one can scarcely imagine where it will be by the time of December’s conference in Copenhagen.

Photo of Jose Manuel Barroso: AP Images

.

.

Source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/1856-eu-proposes-global-wealth-redistribution

.