No. 211 February 4th 2020

The EU pours millions of Euro into the Israeli arms industry while it continues to destroy EU – funded structures!

A new report shows that the EU is funnelling millions of euros of taxpayers’ money to Israeli weapons manufacturers while Israel has sped up demolitions of EU-funded and Palestinian structures in the West Bank.

Another report, published by the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine, shows that the EU has handed out 2m euros to private weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems and more than 7m euros to state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) between 2014 and 2019. The companies received grants under the EU’s programme for research funding, Horizon 2020.

In the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s 2018 report on the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, Elbit placed 28th, while IAI came 41st.The EU funding two of the world’s largest military companies is ethically dubious in the extreme.

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Four People’s Movement patrons to contest the election.

They are Independents, Thomas Pringle in Donegal and Catherine Connolly in West. Catherine is a fluent Irish speaker and has a strong record on the environment while being a vocal opponent of PESCO. In the last Dáil, she sat on the Public Accounts Committee and was Chair of the Committee on the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands.

Thanks to Thomas Pringle, Ireland is the world’s first country to divest investment in fossil fuels. He secured cross-party support and successfully steered the Bill through the Dáil, resulting in The Fossil Fuel Divestment Act. Thomas has been a consistent critic of EU militarisation and a staunch defender of Irish fishing interests. He was shortlisted for the European Innovation in Politics Awards. These were two hard – working deputies in the last Dáil and we ask you to give them your support, should you be a voter in their respective constituency.

Alderman Declan Bree, Independents 4 Change, who is contesting Sligo Leitrim is a long – standing patron and has assisted us on many occasions over the years. He is a life - long defender of workers’ rights and opposes Ireland’s membership of PESCO while advocating

Mairéad Farrell, Socialist, Republican & Feminist is standing for Sinn Féin in Galway West. An active councillor, she is the latest patron of the Peoples Movement.

Seamus Healy, Workers and Unemployed Action, though not a patron has been helpful during the last Dáil term. Please give them your support, should you be a voter in their respective constituency.

Maureen O’Sullivan TD retires.

Maureen O’Sullivan has decided to retire as a TD, bringing to an end almost 40 years of representation of Dublin’s inner city by the independent organisation founded by the late Tony Gregory. Maureen was elected after his death in 2009. She worked as a member of the Independents 4 Change group along with Catherine Connolly, Joan Collins and Thomas Pringle.

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EU intelligence gathering intensifies.

Momentous changes are underway in EU intelligence gathering, propelled by new technology and a political push for integration. And it’s all quietly happening without any public debate or indeed, information. The evolution of government surveillance is multi- faceted and confusing. Agencies across the continent are deploying an avalanche of new technologies, notably machine learning, to both advance new capabilities such as biometric surveillance.

Read more here TTIP hasn’t gone away you know!

Concerns that TTIP was anti- democratic and would lower food safety, labour and environmental standards resulted in mass protests in Germany, Austria and France and some protests here in Ireland in 2015. Speaking last week, US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said that the EU ban on US chicken and hormone- treated beef needs to be revisited as part of ongoing trade negotiations. Perdue went on to say that he understood “there is a challenge” which EU governments face in convincing their populations that chicken and beef from the US is safe.

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Time for trade unionists to break free from TINA!

The argument that the EU is necessary to protect workers’ rights is based on four fundamental misconceptions that go to the very core of the failure of “progressives” to overcome their disastrous ideological domination by TINA (there is no alternative)

It is based on the false assumption that the EU protects workers’ rights whilst at the same time over estimating the limited protections enacted.

It elevates and relies on the legal system rather than collective bargaining by workers organised in trade unions

It displays an ignorance of trade union history and in so doing undermines the role of organised workers to win hard fought improvement in wages and living standards.

It ignores the anti-trade union rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), based, as they are, on the palpable pro- employer nature of the EU itself.

The Irish Trade union leadership enchantment with the EU stems from now shattered myth of “social Europe” propounded to them by Jacques Delors in 1988. The Lisbon Programme of 2000 effectively undermined any promises of the Delors agenda by insisting on “flexicurity”: more precarious work, supported by a social security “safety net”. Read more here

You may not have heard that Ireland has signed up to Eurojust?

The new Regulation establishing Eurojust as an Agency officially applied from 12 December last. Ireland is now an integral and full operational partner in that organisation. Both houses of the Oireachtas already decided to opt-in as a full-fledged member of Eurojust in June 2019. The decision to opt-in formalises and builds on the existing cooperation and exchange of information in judicial matters and the strong rise in the number of Irish cases registered at Eurojust. Based on Protocol 21 of the Lisbon Treaty on the position of the UK and Ireland within the so – called Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, annexed to the Treaty, both countries were required to opt- in to the new Eurojust Regulation, which is established as an official EU Agency as of 12 December 2019. The Irish government decided to opt-in, in June. The participation of Ireland was confirmed by the EU Commission on 29 November 2019.

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The bould Eamon! Back in July 2008, delegates voted to back the Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign, following a 214 to 107 result at a specially-called conference in the Mansion House, Dublin. Party leader John Gormley said “it is a great result” for the party, and will allow it to "campaign vigorously” for a Yes result in the referendum to be put to the people on October 2nd. Read more here

The European Defence Industrial Development Program (EDIDP) – the rationale for the Dublin ‘Security Conference’?

The European defence industrial development program (EDIDP), established by Regulation (EU) 2018/1092, is an industrial program of the EU aiming to support the competitiveness and innovation capacity of the union’s defence industry. This program will be implemented by the Commission through annual calls for proposals, having already begun in 2019 and continuing into this year.

The program, with a financial envelope of €500 million, will co-finance the joint development of defence products and technologies. The calls for proposals are based on a 2-year work program defined in close cooperation with EU countries and adopted by the European Commission on 19 March 2019. There were 9 calls for proposals in 2019, and will be 12 in 2020. The 2019 calls included – Read more here NATO presence at Dublin ‘Security Conference’.

Dubbed, ‘a landmark event presenting to the country and the wider world, Ireland’s indigenous security thought leaders, researchers and industries.’ It is being held at The Helix, Dublin on February 25th and 26th.

No doubt, this is Ireland’s contribution to the EU’s evolving military/industrial complex and a preparatory event set to position Irish companies to pitch for EDF funds. is a keynote speaker.

Below are the insignia of some of those involved.

Among the other speakers are, CDR Michael Widmann, Strategy Branch Chief NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence on right and Russell Travers, Acting Director US National Counterterrorism Center.

Who would have thought we would see the day! The US wants out of ISDS but EU representatives are pushing governments to accept the EU’s Multilateral Investment Court (MIC) proposal. The MIC is an ISDS re-branding. Yes, it addresses some of ISDS’s worst procedural problems. However, it sustains the fundamental injustice of providing foreign investors special substantive rights and privileges. It would sustain corporations’ powers to attack governments, while governments would have only obligations to investors and no rights to act against them. No to MIC!! While the United States is no longer in favour of the ISDS mechanism, EU officials are desperately trying to save ISDS, the legal regime that gives corporations vast extra-judicial rights to seek damages from governments. In 2016, ISDS played a significant role in scuttling the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). And in 2015, a major reason that the Trans-Pacific Partnership could not garner a simple majority in the U.S. Congress was the pact’s inclusion of far- reaching ISDS terms.

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