"This is exactly how the communists maintained themselves in power in my country. They didn't ban elections – we had elections every four years. They just banned their opponents from contesting the elections."
Michal Kaminski, Polish MEP

The European Commission has introduced a directive (the European Political Parties Directive) which calls for state-funded political parties. To qualify for funding, parties would have to:

1) contest elections on the same manifesto throughout Europe
2) have a minimum level of support in at least 7 countries
3) "accept the values of the EU, as set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms"

These criteria are self-evidently designed to bar Eurosceptic parties from receiving this funding. Believing that government should take place at the level of national democracies, Eurosceptic parties are unwilling to merge into pan-European movements. Neither could they agree to accept EU "values" (ie laws) being imposed on member states regardless of the views of national parliaments.

This directive would therefore skew European democracy by giving federalist parties a huge financial advantage over Eurosceptic parties. This is, of course, in addition to the huge amount of taxpayers' money that the European Commission (and other EU bodies) routinely spend on federalist propaganda. Click here for more information, or click here to sign a petition calling for all parties to be allowed to contest European elections on an equal footing.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
Noam Chomsky