NigelFarage

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Political Memory: Nigel FARAGE, MEP

{{#icon:NigelFarage.jpg|Nigel FARAGE}}

General Data

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Contact
{{#icon:Click_to_call_now.png|+32 2 28 45 855||callto://+3222845855}}


Functions in European Parliament

Curriculum Vitae

  • Secondary education
  • Has worked for British, French and American companies operating in the commodity markets, especially the London Metal Exchange (since 1982)
  • In the UK Independence Party: National Chairman (1998-2000)
  • Chairman of the European Election Committee (2002-2004)
  • Chairman, South East Counties (since 1999)
  • National spokesman (since 2000)
  • Member of the European Parliament (since 1999)
  • Vice-Chairman of the EDD Group (1999-2004)

Votes


Opinions

Sources

Positions

Please improve this section with opinions from Nigel FARAGE, about issues that La Quadrature du Net are concerned about (see Help:Political_Memory for information on how to do this). Thank you.

07/07/2008 Reply to campaign concerning vote on IMCO & ITRE of Telecoms package

Dear Sir

Thank you for your message about the insertion of provisions relating to IPR into the Telecoms Package.

Be assured that UKIP's MEP's will vote against any such insertion and, indeed, against the package itself and any amendment which extends its scope or hastens its introduction.

This is because the EU is inherently, irreformably and dangerously un-democratic and anti-democratic.

I quite agree with you about the undesirability of the elements you mention; but the content of the provisions is less significant, to us, than their source.

Nevertheless, I'm sure we shall vote as you would wish.

Yours faithfully

Andrew S. Reed

(Office of Nigel Farage)

Clearly, this is a position against the whole Telecoms package, we could be satisfied with it, but then the reason is that their group is deeply Euro-skeptic and he considers the European Union as "irreformable and antidemocratic". In short, they consider more the source of the project as undesirable, rather than the project itself.

27/01/2012 regarding ACTA

Dear Campaigner

"Anti-Counterfeiting Trade-Agreement" (ACTA) http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/assets/pdfs/acta-crc_apr15-2011_eng.pdf

ACTA transfers questions of copyright-, patent- and trademark-infringement, from civil law to criminal law, in 39 countries (assuming that Germany, Estonia, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Slovakia will ratify it) and stipulates, in some detail, what that criminal law shall consist of.

It stipulates also that a QUANGO be set up (at public expense) by each signatory-government, to receive complaints from rights-holders and impose, on infringers, penalties "sufficient to have deterrent effect".

The ACTA-Committee, on which EU-governments will have a 27/12 majority, will meet periodically to consider ACTA-amendments, which will become law, in all 39 states, when every signatory-government has ratified them, without further consideration by any elected body - not even the EU's so-called "parliament".

Because UKIP insists on defending and restoring the sovereignty of the electorate and on the responsibility of elected representatives alone to make laws, UKIP is the only party to have opposed the ACTA unconditionally since it was first proposed.

Others (mainly Greens, Socialists and "Pirates") expressed disquiet about ACTA, in the EU's "parliament"; but they also subscribed to a Written Declaration and a Parliamentary Resolution, which merely called upon the EU-Commission to negotiate ACTA according to certain guidelines and including certain safeguards. Thus, these statements failed to challenge either the essential rationale of ACTA, or the EU-Commission's legitimacy as the ACTA-negotiator.

UKIP challenges both of these things and so refused to subscribe to either statement. In the approach to the 2010 General Election, in the UK, this refusal was alleged, by the Pirate-Party, to be evidence that UKIP was in favour of ACTA, but this untrue allegation had little impact.

If the five governments, indicated above, sign the ACTA, then the agreement will come before the EU's "parliament", where it can expect a rough reception. The Greens and Socialists - with 248 votes between them - have said they will oppose it. The "United Left" (34 votes) will follow suit. Most of the EFD - including UKIP - and the NI (total 63 members) will also vote against. The ECR - including the Tories - (53 members) may then feel that it cannot get away with not voting against, in which case, even if all of the EPP and ALDE - including the LibDems - vote for ACTA, this would provide a majority-against of 26, the defeat of ACTA and the first defeat of a major Commission-proposal since 2005.

Prior to this, we shall see if an instrument can be raised - by UKIP-Peers, in the House of Lords - calling upon HMG to withdraw its signature from ACTA. By doing this, we would attract more public attention to ACTA and to UKIP's opposition to it, even though the instrument would almost certainly be rejected, because both the Commons' and the Lords' "EU-scrutiny-committees" expedited the ACTA, last year, without even putting it to votes, in their respective Houses.

(In the Commons Scrutiny-Committee, the ACTA was included among "22 [EU-] documents not raising questions of sufficient legal or political importance to warrant a substantive report to the House", and nodded through on that basis)

Westminster having thus become, predominantly, the haunt of EU-sycophants and EU-careerists, it falls to the EU's "parliament" (which is usually even worse) to stand in the way of a seminal, supra-nationalist initiative, and UKIP will make every effort to ensure that, for only the second time this century, it actually does so.

Yours sincerely

Andrew S. Reed

Office of Nigel Farage, Brussels