David Martin's EU Tribune

I am getting ready to take the second half of the marathon journey to the Strasbourg Parliament whilst the London Parliament prepares to hold a debate on an irrelevant European Union (EU) Referendum on Britain’s relationship with the biggest trading area in the world – i.e. the EU which we are already members of. While [...]

Indonesian double standards on West Papua. I noticed that at the recent UN General Assembly Indonesia was in the front line of supporting Palestinian efforts to become a member of the United Nations. Indonesia has been supporting the Palestinian case ever since they declared their independence. But what about the fate of West Papua which [...]

One of my biggest constituent mailbag issues continues to be animal welfare. And the biggest item at present is the ‘cleansing’ of stray dogs in certain Ukraine towns in preparation for the European Cup football in 2012. The authorities’ chosen methods of extermination are vicious and include poisoning, shooting, burning alive and suffocating to death. [...]

I believe the European Parliament needs major new powers to conduct investigations. These powers should include the right to summon European Commissioners, officials and Member State politicians to give evidence to inquiries into breaches of EU law. My draft Report, calling for such measures, was passed by the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee earlier this [...]

The European Commission have proposed a series of new measures on energy efficiency aimed at contributing towards reaching the target that the EU has set itself, that is, to cut energy consumption by 2020 by 20%. The measures include: the establishment of energy saving schemes in all Member States; the obligation for the public sector [...]

The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has come out in his annual “State of the Union” speech in Brussels in favour of the Robin Hood Tax. Barroso maintained that solutions to the crisis in the West, and specifically in the European Union, existed. He argued that Greece will remain a member of [...]

One of the most positive aspects of being a member state in the European Union (EU) is our attitude towards the death penalty: it is illegal for any EU state to take a life; and our attitude to animal welfare. One of my proudest achievements is getting an amendment to the Maastricht Treaty which changed [...]

The Con/Dem Government in the UK say there is no alternative but to cut working peoples standard of living to get us out of the mess the bankers made. The European Parliament’s main progressive group the Socialists and Democrats (of which I am a member) have adopted an ambitious, ten-point strategy on social policy aimed [...]