Dear Friends, In November, in and outside the organisation, Federalists have been much discussing issues related to EU Budget, strengthening of the eurozone and climate change and letting Europe to know federalistic solutions to these issues.

UEF Secretariat is now working on the wrap-up of 2010 and actively planning activities for 2011.

Sincerely yours,
Christian Wenning
UEF Secretary General 

On Friday October 29 heads of national sections of UEF gathered to discuss UEF internal communication and its external visibility, and more importantly, to set up framework for the action plan 2010"2020.
 
Later in the evening, UEF President Andrew Duff MEP invited EU Commissioner for Budget Janusz Lewandowski to join the meeting and share his thoughts on the future negotiations for the financial perspectives for 2014"2020.
 
In his speech Mr. Lewandowski said that the way the European budget was currently financed is contradicting the spirit of the treaties and vision of the Founding Fathers of the European Union. 76 percents are still payments from the national budgets and only 12 percents can be called genuine own EU resources. With the responsibilities of the EU under the Lisbon Treaty, it is worrying when EU member states would want to reduce rather than to increase the European budget. Knowing that the EU budget is growing at a slower pace than the national budgets, and keeping in mind that euroscepticism is increasingly growing across Europe, the Commissioner pointed that Federalists’ priority number one should be campaigning and organizing actions in order to stress the importance of a bigger EU budget.

Saturday, November 6, a conference on Europe's position and the proposals of the movements and organizations of civil society in view of the UN Conference on Climate Change in Cancun was held in Rimini, Italy, in the framework the Fair Ecomondo 2010, one of the biggest expos of green technologies and new lifestyles.  

"New Energy for Europe!" was the motto of this year's federal congress of Europa-Union Deutschland. More than 250 delegates and guests met last weekend (November 20-21) in Erfurt. The guest speakers of the congress, Prime Minister of Thuringia Christine Lieberknecht, EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger, and the writer Navid Kermani gave important ideas for the political debate of the delegates from all over Germany and Brussels. Over ten resolutions that deal with different areas of European policy were adopted by the delegates.

On November 20, the Central Committee of MFE (UEF Italy) met in Rome. The meeting, which was attended by more than 60 delegates, approved several resolutions, in which MFE:

•    deplores that the European members of IMF did not exploit the occasion of the reorganization of the Executive Committee for proposing a unified seat for the EU in the institution
•    criticizes Obama’s proposal to assign a permanent seat in the UN Security Council to India, instead of affirming the principle that permanent seats should be attributed to regional federations, starting with the EU
•    deplores the decision by the Federal Reserve to launch a second round of quantitative easing (QE2), instead of supporting China’s proposal to recur to a basket of currencies instead of the dollar as a reserve currency, which could be a first step towards the creation of an authentic world currency
•    expresses its preoccupation for the financial crisis that is putting at risk the very existence of the eurozone, and reaffirms that in order to solve the fatal contradiction of a monetary union without a federal state it is necessary to convoke a Convention endowed with constituent powers – even outside the framework of the current Treaties and among a vanguard of member states, if there shall be no unanimity. This Convention should propose the creation of a fiscal and economic Union alongside EMU, and the transfer of foreign and security policy to the EU level, so completing the transition to the European Federation
•    reaffirms its commitment to continue its Campaign for a European Federation (http://wetheeuropeanpeople.eu), and launches the organisation of European Citizens’ Conventions in 100 Italian cities
•    expresses its preoccupation for the political stalemate in Italy, and calls on the most responsible political forces in the country to give life to an emergency coalition government in order to deal with the financial crisis and to reaffirm the traditional Italian role in supporting the further unification of Europe
•    convokes the 25th National Congress of MFE, which will be held in Gorizia, from March 11 to 13.
For those who can read Italian, the integral text of the documents can be retrieved from MFE’s website (http://www.mfe.it).

On November 15, Federal Union (UEF United Kingdom) organised an evening conference in London on future of the eurozone. The eurozone is facing the largest crisis in its history.  Public debt is ballooning, economic growth is weak or non-existent, and mistrust between the member states appears to be on the rise.  Can the European Union overcome the economic and political threats and restore faith and confidence in its currency union?
At the last European summit, the European Council endorsed the report of the Task Force on economic governance, claiming that “Its implementation will constitute a major step forward in strengthening the economic pillar of EMU: it will increase fiscal discipline, broaden economic surveillance and deepen coordination.”
Distinguished experts participated in the conferene sharing their commentaries and analysis:
•    Dr Eckhard Lübkemeier, Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany has a PhD in Political Science and has also been a research fellow at Harvard as well as the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, Bonn
•    John Stevens, former member of the European Parliament, who is an enthusiastic advocate for British membership of the euro
•    Brendan Donnelly, Director of the Federal Trust, is also a former member of the European Parliament, and has worked at the Foreign Office and the European Commission.
http://www.federaleurope.org/uef/news/alain-lamassoure-a-case-for-an-optimistic-federalism/

On December 3, UEF Bulgaria along with the Information Office of the European Parliament will organise a public discussion “Europe, which way?" in Sofia University. The panelists include MEPs Dr Andrey Kovatchev, PPE, President of UEF Bulgaria, Iliana Ivanova, PPE and Evgeni Kirilov, S&D. During the discussion the Spinelli Group in the EP will be introduced.
 
The topics to be discussed are as follows:
- The necessity for a new political and economic architecture of the EU
- What caused the problems in the eurozone and will there be common European economic governance
- Is it necessary to amend the Lisbon Treaty less than a year after its entry into force
- Will a single European army be cheaper for the EU
 
For more info contact UEF Bulgaria Secretary-General Velko Ivanov (asea(at)scas.acad.bg).

The Young European Federalists (JEF) have released the new issue of their bi-weekly Newsletter JEF-INFO. To find the full version of the newsletter at the homepage of JEF Europe, click here.