EU United!

Nope it’s not a football club, although the name could very well be used for one (maybe based in Brussels?). It is my perception of how the EU should move to the upcoming parliamentary elections.

European Parliament

On Monday, December 1st, social democratic and socialist parties adopted the PES manifesto for the 2009 European elections in a spirit of unity constituting a slap in conservatives’ open market faith, stepping on the current global crisis.

FT’s blog post successfully titled “Europe’s socialists fight under the banner: “The Free Market Has Failed”“

But this is not the point I’m trying to make. What I am trying to stress out here is how important is the reaction of the conservative, as well as all other grouped parties, across the EU and how important  people’s reaction is towards elections.

Is this for real?

1€ = 1.57545$

[thanks Dr.Xos]

We are all criminals, aren’t we?

I read on the news (in Greek; “Τρομοκράτες” ετών 6…) that Greece will start recording the finger prints of all children from the age of six.

Hellooooo, that’s old news already, as I recall reading about it some time ago for the UK (MIllions of children to be fingerprinted). It was only a matter of time to spread over Europe. The rationale, as pointed out, is that everyone could be considered as a potential criminal. However, such centralized gathering of information, as it will take place under EU legislation, it will most likely result into the largest database of personal information for all EU citizens. This will most likely will be against the local constitutional rights of the country members like Greece (that’s my estimation, I need to look it up ), and it also raises several concerns regarding several issues(who will be managing such sensitive information, what will be the level of access to the local governments, and for which reasons, etc.).

If we also consider the fact that long time ago, in 2003, the EU Commission has given the permission to the US authorities to have access on personal information of all EU citizens traveling to the US by airlines (Commission agrees US access to EU citizen personal data), the handling of such personal information database becomes extremely important and critical.

Definitely the issue is not so simple as there are benefits as well, like a unified identification system within the E (after all we are trying to become a real union, right?) and many more aspects. I will definitely have a closer look and post again in the near future I hope.