Briefings

  • Settled Status will hurt the most vulnerable EU citizens

    Despite government assurances to the contrary, the “EU Settlement Scheme” is unlikely to work smoothly for everyone, and in many cases this could have a devastating impact, in particular on some of the most vulnerable. I have been speaking with organisations that help migrants, including EU migrants, integrate in Yorkshire, to hear about how the EU settlement scheme might impact the people they work with.

  • The economic crisis

    This downturn was triggered by by events in the credit market in the USA, but it has revealed a number of wider failings: shortcomings in national economic policies in a number of countries, such as failures to deal with asset bubbles, loss of competitiveness, excessive debt or insufficient investment shortcomings in the European Union’s single […]

  • Opting out

    I suspect that, when you scratch beneath the surface, the things that these people object to are actually the common rules for the common market — consumer protection rules and social standards, for instance. So, opting out of everything except the common market would not actually give the Tory eurosceptics what they want. What they […]

  • The environment

    Water, for example, cannot be separated by nation state — pollution from one country can easily affect the rivers and beaches of another. Birds fly across national boundaries. Waste like household rubbish and batteries can all too easily be collected in one country and illegally dumped in another. Air pollution from one country causes acid […]

  • An MEP’s job

    About the European Parliament About the European Commission

  • What Europe is for

    We need the European Union for three main reasons. Europe-wide laws have improved all our lives. The bulk of European Union laws are rules for what is now the world’s largest free market. And many of those rules are intended to make life easier for business, cutting red tape and bureaucracy. This is done by […]