13 May 2012
The EHF has written to the Ombudsman with firm comments on the EU Commission’s response to our complaint about their approach to the Article 17 dialogue with us and in particular their treatment of our request for a dialogue seminar. Our covering letter is here. It attaches our detailed comments, which have three enclosures: a letter from BEPA to the EHF dated 16 November 2011; an email from BEPA to the EHFdated 5 May 2011 and a letter… read more »
The Ombudsman in March 2012 forwarded to us for comment the EU Commission’s response to our complaint about their discrimination against us in their implementation of the Article 17 dialogue. The Ombudsman’s letter and the EU response may be read here. For the EHF’s complaint, see here . For the Ombudsman’s request for comments from the Commission, see here. For the EHF’s comments to the Ombudsman on the Commission’s response, see here.
23 April 2012
Hans Christian Cars represented EHF at the meeting of the EU Fundamental Rights Platform for NGOs (the FRP) on 19-20 April 2012. He reports: It was as usual thoroughly well organised with two panel discussions with invited experts and some forty workshops of which thirty were conducted by NGOs and the rest by FRA staff. In the election for Advisory Panel members, six were elected from a pool of 24 candidates. Regrettably one of these was… read more »
1 March 2012
Speaking at a seminar in Brussels yesterday, EHF president David Pollock suggested that all states in Europe were progressing, from different starting points and at different speeds, towards secularism. He was commenting on part of an EU-financed study on Identities and Modernities in Europe, a collaboration between several universities across Europe, part of which had looked at religion in schools in Bulgaria, Croatia, France and the United Kingdom – see here. He said: “From the time of… read more »
29 January 2012
The EHF has responded to an EU consultation on policy on illegal drugs with a strong call for a radical review of what it calls the “gross failure” of present policies. It says that criminalisation-based policies: are ineffective and costly to the whole of society have increased collateral damage and insecurity for drug users have tended to exaggerate the dangers linked to drug consumption are not coherent with political attitudes towards other addictive substances. The… read more »
1 December 2011
President Buzek invited the non-confessional organisations to a meeting in the European Parliament on 30 November 2011 to discuss its implementation of the Article 17 dialogue. This took place after the Article 17 “summit” with the three EU Presidents, reported here. Unfortunately the President was unable to attend until the last minute or two (he had to preside at a plenary session of the Parliament which also drew away for much of the time the… read more »
The third annual “summit” meeting of “philosophical and non-confessional” organisations with the three EU Presidents under Article 17 was held on November 30. The press conference: Presidents Buzek, Barroso and van Rompuy. David Pollock is between the first two; Pierre Galand at the extreme right. David Pollock took advantage of it to expose the dissatisfaction of the humanist and secularist movement with the way the Commission is implementing the dialogue under Article 17. The EHF… read more »
[Français] [Deutsch] [Italiano] On the occasion of the World Aids Day, 1 December 2011, the European Parliament adopted a resolution about the EU’s work to fight against AIDS in the European Union and its neighbouring countries. This resolution defines the position of all political groups in the EP. The text underlines the necessity of strengthening EU and member states’ action to fight against HIV, by increasing access to exhaustive information, testing and efficient protection and… read more »
29 November 2011
The EHF has called for religious influence on EU-funded research to be eliminated. At present, funding of research using embryonic stem cells is banned – the result of religious lobbying when the current framework was agreed. The Catholic church, in its response to a new and wide-ranging EU consultation on the framework for future scientific research, has said the ban should be maintained and even extended. It has even called for research to be commissioned specially designed… read more »
23 November 2011
The EU Ombudsman is taking seriously the EHF’s complaint about the EU Commisssion’s approach to the Article 17 dialogue with us and in particular its treatment of our request for a dialogue seminar. In a letter to the EHF dated 15 November, he tells us of the questions he has put to the Commission. See here for an EHF press release, dated 23 November. For the EHF’s complaint, see here . For the Commission… read more »