Brief items for which space was lacking in earlier editions
*** EU/Defence/United Kingdom: Former British Prime Minister Lady Thatcher said that the latest developments towards a European Security and Defence Policy was a "monumental folly". "I prefer NATO and I prefer the great alliance between Britain, Europe and America", she said. Tony Blair then commented: "It really is time, in my view, that we move British politics beyond the time of Margaret Thatcher. We are in a new era".
*** EP/Terrorism: Following the assassination by ETA of the former minister and university professor Ernest Lluch, the President of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, Enrique Baron condemned the attack and recalled that he had worked closely with Mr. Lluch in the transition period to democracy in Spain, and that he had been, with him, a minister in the Socialist Government of Felipe Gonzalez. I have lost a close friend, said Enrique Baron. All political classes in Spain paid tribute to the man of dialogue that was Ernest Lluch.
*** Russia/Trade unions: Three large Russian trade unions - the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, the Russian General Labour Confederation and the Labour Confederation of Russia - have been accepted as affiliates of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the world's largest trade union organisation, the ICFTU stresses in a press release, stating that this was a "historic step".
*** EU/Fry: European Social-Democrat leaders, Lena Hjm-Wallen, Jan Marinus Wiersma and Hannes Swoboda have written to the Social-Democrat parties of Serbia asking them to present an adequate number of women in the legislative elections of 23 December. Furthermore, in Brussels, German Christian-Democrat Doris Pack, Head of the EP delegation for South East Europe and other MEPs received Flora Brovina, medical practitioner and President of the League of Albanian Women, who was arrested in Pristina in April accused of "terrorist activities against the State" and freed on 1 November on the orders of President Kostunica. On that occasion, Ms. Brovina regretted that the new President of the Fry had not seized the opportunity immediately after his election to settle the fate of political prisoners in Kosovo.
*** EP/Quart Monde: The Intergroup Comité Quart Monde of the European Parliament, meeting under the chair of Martine Roure MEP, said it was disappointed at the way the "Culture 2000" programme had acted upon "its announced priority" this year in favour of the underprivileged populations. At the request of the Intergroup, the Chair of the EP's Culture Committee, has written to Commissioner Viviane Reding asking that this priority be explicitly included in the planned actions in the forthcoming Appeal for candidates for the programme for 2001. The Intergroup, moreover, calls on the EP's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs to draw up an own-initiative report on the Goals of the struggle against poverty and social exclusion adopted by the Council on 17 October, and that has to be submitted to the Nice Summit.
*** EP/Children: Marie-Therese Hermange MEP, head of mission to the EP President for childhood protection, has asked the European Parliament to take the initiative of proclaiming 20 November as European Day of the Right of the Child. Furthermore, Forza Italian MEP Mario Mantovani visited Romania to check on the efforts being made in that country to settle the problem of abandoned children, and, on that occasion, met the country's Prime Minister and the President of the National Agency for Childhood.
*** EP/Tunisia: The Green Group in the EP has condemned the arrest by Tunisian customs officials, at the Airport of Tunis on 22 November, of the Green MEP Helene Flautre, who was accompanying the journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, back from a round in France to present his latest book "Le rire de la baleine". The Tunisian customs officials proceeded to search the luggage of the MEP and seized books written by Mr. Ben Brik (none of which were banned in Tunisia) and a report on torture in Tunisia, says a press release.
*** EP/International Movement: The President of the International European Movement, Jose Maria Gil-Robles MEP, received the European Parliament's Golden Medal from the hands of EP President Nicole Fontaine (Gil-Robles led the European Parliament from July 1997 to July 1999).
*** Council of Europe/Russia: A delegation from the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was on a fact-finding mission in Moscow last week, as well as in the region of Stavropol and in the Chechen Republic, in view of drawing up a report on the humanitarian situation of refugees and displaced persons in Chechnya, to be examined at the plenary session of the Assembly of the Council of Europe in January 2001.