Life sciences threatened
The Fresh Start Project – a “moderate” eurosceptic organisation that wants the EU treaties to be renegotiated – warns that an increasingly anti-science culture in the EU is holding Britain’s life sciences sector back, particularly in biotech. Major medical research projects, including those on cancer and Alzheimer’s, are at risk from pending EU data protection legislation. The report recommends ten measures to redress the situation, including an option for member states to go it alone in designing appropriate regulatory frameworks for GM crops.
Now we cap it, now we don’t
Home Secretary Theresa May is now playing down reports the government is to put a cap on EU migrants, saying she wouldn’t introduce a cap now, just “the possibility of reform in the future”.
Megalomaniac Merkel
A POLL by Survation in early January found that 50 per cent of people in Britain would vote to leave the EU and 33 per cent in favour staying in – the lowest ever number wanting to stay in polled by Survation on the issue. The chief concern over Romanian and Bulgarian migrants is how schools will cope with extra children.
United States of Europe
Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, has called for political union, “a United States of Europe with the Commission as government and two chambers – the European Parliament and a Senate of Member States”. She said the British government was raising scares about migration as a distraction from “real subjects”.
Backing down on banks
A draft European Commission proposal shows the EU is to drop plans to force big European banks to split their lending operations from risky trading. These controls were proposed by the Liikanen Report after the financial crisis of 2008, but are to be watered down after resistance by the major banks involved in the crisis. ■