Strasbourg, 14/12/2006 (Agence Europe) - The political geography of the European Parliament has changed: - after being joined by 10 MEPs from the Independence and Democracy Group and the Non-Attached, the Union for a Europe of Nations (UEN), now with 44 members, becomes the 4th largest political group at the EP. This news was officially announced on Wednesday before the plenary votes by EP President Josep Borrell, in follow-up to a letter addressed to him by the presidents of the UEN Group, Christiana Muscardini (Alleanza nazionale, Italy) and Brian Crowley (FF, Ireland).
With 6 new Polish members - Miroslaw Mariusz Piotrowski, Bogdan Pek, Boguslaw Rogalski, Andrzej Tomasz Zapalowski and Dariusz Maciej Grabowski, all five from the League of Families, as well as Wieslaw Stefan Kuc from the Samoobrona RP party - and 4 new Italian members - Mario Borghezio, Umberto Bossi, Francesco Enrico Speroni and Gian Paolo Gobbo, all four from La Lega Nord - the UEN thus ranks before the GUE/NGL (41 members) and the Greens/EFA (42 members) groups. “We are not eurosceptics but we do not want a federal Europe - we do not want a super State”, Pasquale Ciuffreda, Spokesman for the UEN Group, told EUROPE, welcoming this “change in the political geography of the EP” which will now allow the UEN to claim the seats of EP vice-president as well as parliamentary committee chairman. “We have entered the UEN Group with conviction as we fully share its values and mainly the idea of a European Union that can develop only in respect of traditions and sovereignties: in short, we have entered the European house of patriots!”, commented Mr Borghezio in a press release, welcoming accession to the group by several Polish MEPs who are “as disgusted as we are” about their experience within the Independence and Democracy Group (Ed.: whose Lega Nord and LPR members had been excluded). (eh)