The EU contents a lot of institutions and committees and it requires a lot of space - we just have to accept and realise that. It is most practical to have the democratic process of the EU gathered at one place.

Anyway, I still think that this issue even if it has to be looked after and discussed is quite unimportant with regard to  other issues our institutions are facing.

It is not mobility, it is rather wasting our money. If you are really talking about mobility, you have to move the parliament and the offices to each country in the EU. This is not possible, and we have to center the parliament in one city, one country - not in two - if we have it a permanent place we will not have "the moving problems". Two parliaments in two countries is not promoting mobility, it is rather giving advantages to both France and Belgium. It is riddiculus to have two parliaments in one European Union. 

I agree with you that we see some problems about the way the MEPs are using their budgets as members of the parliament. Of course we have to give them fair budgets and we have to make sure that the member countries' money and the citizens' money are being used in a correct way. But it is another discussion. But I cannot see how it is an argument of keeping the TWO parliamental buildings.

It costs European taxpayers approximately 200 million euros each year to move the parliament. Perhaps it is not a very big amount, but stopping the travel will save these money and it will give a better reliability to the EU generally and the work in the parliament if we are not wasting the money in this insane way of travelling between Brussels and Strasbourg.

This group has a clear neo nazi background, the name itself is a reference to Nazi mass graves. Their music is basically a remake of very famous Italian song...they play with the lyrics, so "Laura non c'é" (meaning Laura is not there) becomes "Anna non c'é"; Anna is  Anna Frank and the song starts in this way: "Anna non c'è, è andata via. L'hanno trovata a casa sua, nella soffitta di Amsterdam, ora è sul treno per Buchenwald"(= Anna is not there, she left. They found her house, in the Amsterdam garret, now she is on the train to Buchenwald).

Those songs are online on youtube, but also on last.fm (and who knows where); their lyrics are on the web as well and they are "sponsored by the Italian section of the neo nazi "Storm Front", a website hosted in the US.

What a shame!

@ pattheact: it's true that the climate in Italy is becoming really heavy...In this case it would be really easy for the Governement and the institutions in general to react: promoting fascism and exalting its value is considered as a crime by the Italian penal code.

A law already exists since long long time, now Italy just needs to apply it!

What is in my sense much more scandalous is the very untransparent way all MEPs are using their travel budgets when travelling to Strasbourg. This system should be changed and I am sure that a lot of money would be saved and normal EU citizens would have a better opinion of the whole story. If one knows that many MEPs make money with their travel budgets because they use very cheap flights or train tickets whereas they get  a higher budget for it...I would prefer that all MEPs handed in invoices for their travelling and other secretarial costs and be reimbursed on their real expenses. No one should tell me that a MEP with the wages they earn cannot advance the money for their trips to Strasbourg, that would be a joke of badest tatse.

Furthermore I do not think that the EU budget would make a lot of savings with this travel story. there are other far more scandalous expenses of the Parliament that we should highlight here if we would really like to have a positive impact on the budget and the image of the EU institutions.

As you rightly say, in Italy we are facing an intolerable situation with a government criminalising ethnic minorities, whilst forgetting that the main problem in Italy comes from Italian citizens linked to the N'Dranghetta, or other Mafia related groups.

The PES secretariat and the responsible for PES activists should take up the opportunity and try to organise a future PES activists gathering in Poznan in order to show the right wing intolerant and violent part of Polish society that (as PES president Rasmussen has rightly stated) we are not impressed by this violence and we will not be afraid of continuing our common fight for a more tolerant and diverse society, in Poland and everywhere in Europe. This is the only clear reply to this type of physical attack. By the way this physical assaults also show that the intellectual predominance is ours and we need to fight for our ideas and strongly support all comrades that might and will be attacked for defending our common ideas.

The European elections are approaching and we need to show unity in our movement, we need to support the political courage of those who still risk their physical and psychological integrity when defending OUR COMMON ideas and values!!!

Now PES activists were attacked just because they were demonstrating for diversity and against intolerance in Poland.

I am getting really worried...

Is there anyway to support the one sit campaign? Any e-petition we can sign or discussion group we can take part into?

Thanks

On the other hand I would like the PES and Mr. Schulz to clearly take position against the Italian government which has become by far the most far-right government the European Union has had for many many years. The Partito Democratico as member of the PES?! should clearly condemn each verbal racist attack from Berlusconi and his fascist allies, clearly condemn the attacks students have recently faced by neo-nazi hooligans during the pacific demonstrations againts the dismanteling of the Italian school system. But they are afraid to frontally attack Berlusconi because this tactic has shown it's limits during the last election campaign, but this should not be an excuse anymore. The climate in Italy is becoming very heavy and it is not good having a dark skin or an exotic name, or be gipsy tout simplement.

The Italian fascism and it's strong "social" links in the Italian society still disseminates ideas openly discussed in the streets, elderly people even calling back the Duce or any other strong leader to guide an enlightened dictatorship.

Reacting on the Facebook content is one small part of the reaction we must have, organising the fall of the racist, ultra-liberal, fascistoide Italian government should be priority umero UNO...

People need to take back the power and in my opinion there is no better way to responsibilise the workers and to make them active citizens ,contributing to the shaping of more fair and better regulated labour markets, source of so many inequalities in the past decades than by inciting them to take part in the trade unionist work.

Sarkozy bientôt membre du PSE? Mais Sarkozy se ferait membre de tout ce qui peut lui servir sur le moment pour donner à entendre aux masses ce qu'elles veulent bien entendre. Sarkozy pure produit de la droite conservatrice et libérale qui a la bouche pleine d'idées et de convictions de gauche voilà ce qui est à la fois irritant dans la forme et rassurant sur le fond. Voilà enfin un leader social-démocrate qui a prouvé à de nombreuses reprises par le passé sa bonne lecture de la problématique actuelle (voir son rapport sur les fonds spéculatifs adopté avec les voix de la droite au PE il y a quelques semaines ) qui avec la contribution de tous les leaders de la gauche européenne décide de sommer le Pésident Sarkozy de transformer ses nombreuses paroles en actes politiques est louable, car il prend ses responsabilités politiques et ne laisse plus le champ libre à l'ultra et hyper actif Sarkozy.

La gauche européenne doit sortir grandie de cette crise car ce sont les remèdes préconisés par la elle qui sont les plus adaptées. Le rêve de la main invisible auto-régulant le marché ardemment défendue par tous les partis de droite au monde est mort, il nous reste à l'enterrer et à faire en sorte qu'il ne génère pas trop martyrs de la cause.

La gauche doit se réapproprier ses idées et faire apparaître Sarkozy comme un VRP de luxe de la social-démocratie européenne. Sarko qui comme le coucou essaye de faire son nid la où il fait le plus chaud et le plus douillet doit être bouté hors de notre maison. Le président Rasmussen le lui a juste gentiment, mais fermement rappelé!

It has been mentioned that a lot of people are not be interested in the election to The European Parliament next year. What can we do to change their attitude?

I do mean we must "take parliaments work" to peoples countries. People want to have clean drinking water, people want to have clean waters surrounding their coastlines, healthy food.  All people want a clean invironment,  such problems people know from the everyday life. They have these on "their body". The Eropean Parliament is working with such kind of issues

As a matter of fact the Danish First Runner , Dan Jorgensen has done a very good work. He has worked with The "Fight against Chemicals" in order to remove toxic substances from children-toys and find alternative substances. We all love our children. Don´t we? It was a fight against lobbyists, too.

The elected members from each countries are not placed after their country in question. The members are placed in the parliament according to their political attitude i.e. Socialist Group, Liberal Groups etc. In the very same way as in their own parliament.

I think a lot of people will change their attitudes when they could listen to such arguments.

Best Regards

Jorn (Olsen), Aarhus Denmark

I share the views and hopes of Joel concerning our own wake-up. The European socialists should inspire themselves and mobilize around a common and hopefull political project in order to motivate our electorate and to beat the conservatives during the upcoming European elections.

Oppose a conservative vision to another conservative vision (but of different cultural background or religious beliefs) and you will end up with wars and religious dogmatic fanatics trying to rule the world. The world and therefore Europe needs a progressive project enabling us to better control and regulate the financial world and markets, offering every European citizen a good level of social protection and education and last but not least becoming a model for a more human and respectful globalization process, ending wars for petrol by promoting a more balanced use of the global resources, by changing our ways of consuming and producing energy...

Yes we definitely alos can do it. So help us spreading the word : " Ich bin ein Obama", just for today! ;-)

As socialists, we must celebrate It.

U.S. citizens have chosen change in 2008.

-As the above poster argues, the way forward is for be banks to have elements of collective social ownership. How will you push these institutions forward and support co-operative credit providers?

-One of the contributary factors in any economic crash is the growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of us. Can the EU ensure that the hyper-rich pay their fair share of tax?It seems national governments can't.

-A new trans-Europe high speed rail network would give a big push to struggling Eastern European economies, but the current predictions are for this to be undertaken in 2025. Wouldn't the money currently spent propping up some of the banks executive salaries be better off spent on building these links and tying this in with various regeneration schemes?

-China supplies goods to the EU but this leads to imbalances in trade, also a contributory factor. Whilst liberalisation of trade has had many positive points, the process appears to have run amok. For example, there is no need for Chinese foodstuffs such as milk or honey to be imported to the EU as the EU has close neighbours who could provide these goods with less environmental cost and more reliably. Can we see a clarification of what China can and cannot supply us?

Although Mr. Berlusconi and his allies have adopted a communication strategy based on the constant manipulation of self-evident truths, the people in the street have not believed them. Not this time. And the struggle will go on.

Take for example the pension-funds.  If they were used to perform an active ownership of the assets they own - in the name of, as representatives of the people whos money they actually represents - we could imaging a totally different management. Then the investments should not be short term, it should be longterm (as pensions require). If the capital was used to own banks we could imaging banks which would be interested in helping people out, low interest on people having small margins and so on.

The financial crisis has shown the limits of the ultra-liberal way of conceiving governance and it has been a long time since the left hasn't been offered as many opportunities to mark their difference with the right, to offer political alternatives to the right wing ultra-liberal doctrine.

2.5 million or 200.000 participants in the demo? This was the main issue discussed in the media after the event. People (and not only in Italy) are looking for answers and sustainable solutions to their needs and not some political positionning based on theories that hardly differe from the political mainstream. I think that Italy is missing socialists and communists in their parliament.

Combatting efficiently the Gelmini law is one god opportunity and the people in the street have shown the strong support the PD has or could have. It has been a true and sincere pleasure to see the Circo Massimo place so crowded with our political allies, demonstrating our strength and reminding the cavalliere that he has no blank cheque to govern and destroy the Italian democracy!