Union for Europe of the Nations – European Alliance

The Union for Europe of the Nations – European Alliance (UEN–EA) is a formerly regionalist-progressive, but now national conservative politial group in the European Union's Commitee of Regions. It was originally established in 1999 as the European Alliance, with strong influence of the European Free Alliance, but the label was reused from 2004 onwards by the Alliance for Europe of the Nations and similarily aligned parties.

History

The European Free Alliance's member parties aligned with a group of independents and the governing party of the Republic of Ireland, Fianna Fáil, to established the European Alliance group in the 1999–2004 term. The group had clear parallels to the group of the regionalists in the European Parliament, as they needed to ally with non-regionalists in both cases in order to establish a political group which could gain recognition and funding from the official institutions. The EFA member parties were in the minority in the EA group, but the same was true for FF and the independents; each of the three constituent factions required the group to gain committee places and influence in the COR.

The members of EFA in the COR were influential politicians, namely Paul Van Grembergen of SPIRIT (Belgium), the Flemish Minister for Interior, Housing, Civil Service, Foreign Trade and Urban Policy; Keith Brown of the Scottish National Party, a local council leader; Juan José Ibarretxe of the Basque Nationalist Party, who is President of the Basque Country; and Dino Viérin of the Valdotanian Union, who is President of the Autonomous Region of the Aosta Valley. These four members of the COR were EFA's contribution to the EA group, which consisted of ten members in total.

Although the European Alliance was a relatively loose grouping of regionalists and non-regionalists, it eventually developed some programmatic coherence as was required by European institutional rules as well as the logical need for group coherence within the COR. The European Alliance decided on eight main principles, which were closely aligned with long-standing EFA policy positions:

* Environmental and Sustainable development as defined in the Brundtland Report from the UN with the full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol
* Peace, détente
* Freedom and right of self-determination
* Defence of all languages, cultures and local government
* An open Europe of autonomous regions and nations
* Openness and grass-roots democracy
* Sound management of all European structures, in order to prevent fraud and waste
* The defence of human rights

EA members were on the one hand committed to cquote|actively support and vote for an open Europe of regions and nations and the highest possible standards for environmental protection, workers' health, consumer protection, veterinary rules, social welfare and democratic principles. The members commit themselves to work together to obtain and defend such rights and equality of treatment. At the same time, they acknowledge the full political autonomy of the individual members and groupings. Thus, similar to the previous quasi-regionalist political groups, the EA at the same time agreed on common positions and allowed members to act autonomously, which was another difficult balancing act for the involved parties.

However, this version of the European Alliance ran for only one term; in 2004, the organisation was reconstituted as UEN–EA group and the European Free Alliance – Democratic Party of the Peoples of Europe parties left. Despite EFA-DPPE representation in the COR and the presence of EFA parties in regional parliaments and some governments, the regionalists found themselves institutionally marginalised within the Committee of the Regions.

References

* [http://www.unc.edu/euce/eusa2007/papers/lynch-p-11e.pdf Organising for a Europe of the Regions: The European Free Alliance-DPPE and Political Representation in the European Union]
* [http://aei.pitt.edu/3303/01/JAS_EUSA_2005_final.txt Absorbing the Shock: Enlargement#s Effects on the Committee of the Regions]
* [http://ariel.qwentes.be/presentation/down/ea/index.html Official website]