Tag: EMiS

Scotland steps up pro- EU campaign as Brexit vote anniversary is marked

The new head of the European Movement in the UK (EMUK) will on Saturday mark the seventh anniversary of the disastrous vote for Brexit by urging Scots to boost the campaign to Rejoin the European Union.

Scotland voted 62-38 to Remain on 23rd June 2016, with current polls showing an even bigger majority – more than 70% – in favour of rejoining the EU and viewing Brexit in the words of Nigel Farage as “a disaster.”

Dr Mike Galsworthy, EMUK’s new chair, will urge a public meeting in Glasgow organised by the European Movement in Scotland to join in a “society-wide, cross-party campaign to propel Scotland towards its European future.”

Dr Galsworthy, founder of Scientists for EU and a leading grassroots campaigner, is spearheading a EMUK drive to expand its membership base, including in Scotland, as the scale of the economic and political damage wrought by Brexit visibly grows with each passing day.

“As European Movement grows at pace, I’m keen that we start building up local groups and membership all over the UK.

“Scotland has always been passionately pro-European and I am delighted to be visiting European Movement in Scotland (EMiS) to meet its team and promote its campaigning across an array of EU-related issues.

“Scotland has its own society-wide cross-party campaign to drive the country forward towards its European future. I’ll be talking about how we can extend and expand that.”

Dr Galsworthy’s visit comes in the immediate aftermath of MPs’ overwhelming vote – 354-7 – to back the privileges committee findings that Boris Johnson, Brexit’s architect, deliberately misled (lied to) the House of Commons – showing utter contempt for the body whose sovereignty he claimed to be restoring.

It also follows the publication by the Scottish Government of a new paper showing the scale of damage seven years on from the Brexit referendum.

These include:

·         An expected loss of £3 billion every year in public revenues for Scotland.

·         Food price inflation at a 45 year high with Brexit responsible for an estimated one third of it.

·         Damaged trade with 44% of businesses in Scotland naming Brexit as the main cause of difficulties trading overseas.

·         Staff shortages reported by 45% of tourism businesses in the Highland and Islands, as a result of the loss of freedom of movement.

The European Movement is growing. Membership has tripled in the last four years, reaching almost 20,000 and growing every day.

The EMiS meeting is at Strathclyde Business School, 199 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G4 0QU, at 6pm.

Further details, including for registration, can be found here.

Pro-EU groups join forces with fresh campaign for Scotland to rejoin EU

The European Movement in Scotland (EMiS), the country’s leading pro-EU body, is stepping up its campaign to rejoin the European Union in 2023 with new hires and a fresh membership drive.

EU+me, another pro-European body, is joining forces with EMiS this month to give what its outgoing chair, Prof Stephen Gethins, calls “focus, scale and momentum” to the growing campaign for Scotland to rejoin the EU – in its own right or as part of the UK.

At the same time, EMiS has appointed David McDonald (SNP), a former depute leader and convener for culture, vibrancy and international relations at Glasgow City Council, to be its new membership and campaigns co-ordinator.

These moves come as David Clarke, a financial consultant and ex-journalist who has worked to develop Scotland’s financial services sector and build relations with his native Ireland, takes over from Mark Lazarowicz, the former Labour MP, as EMiS chair with a remit to grow the membership and boost the rejoin movement.

They also come on the 50th anniversary of the UK joining the then European Economic Community in 1973 and amid widespread evidence that British voters are repenting their 2016 decision to exit the EU (Brexit), increasingly tending to favour rejoining the world’s biggest peace project and trading bloc.

According to YouGov, only 32% of people across the UK now believe it was right to leave the EU while a clear majority, 56%, says it was wrong – a margin of 24 points, the widest recorded since the 2016 referendum. Almost three-quarters of young Scots wish to rejoin the EU.

Like EMiS, EU+me has been a non-partisan network of pro-Europeans making the positive case for our future as a European nation at the heart of the EU. Its outgoing chair, ex-SNP MP, Professor Gethins, is joining the EMiS executive as a co-opted member in the wake of the merger.

Stephen Gethins, former SNP MP and spokesperson for international affairs and Europe, said: “The European Union is one of the great success stories of our times. It has delivered peace, prosperity and stability to its citizens since it was founded.

“Every state that has joined the EU has seen an improvement in the quality of life of its citizens. The only Member State to have left, the UK, has seen a deterioration of its citizens’ quality of life.

“We all know that leaving the EU against our will has had a devastating impact on our economy, on our freedoms, protections and rights. Young people, who have had opportunity snatched away, and small businesses who have seen a dramatic increase in red tape have been particularly badly affected. It is unsurprising that support for rejoining the EU is growing in support whilst backing for remaining isolated outside is evaporating.

“This is the right time to consolidate the major pro-European campaigns in Scotland. Providing focus, scale and momentum. EMIS is the obvious point of consolidation and host for that process. EU+me have now formalised the partnership that we have always enjoyed with colleagues in EMIS. We will now be joining forces putting our resources, innovative content and network of relationships fully behind.”

David Clarke added: ” The statistics are becoming clearer by the day, no matter what the Brexit flat-earthers would have us believe – leaving the EU has made us poorer and our lives more difficult. As a result, pro-Europeans in Scotland are uniting around the benefits of closer links with our European partners with the eventual aim of rejoining the EU.

“We are determined to provide a clear and evidence-based path to closer cooperation with Europe and we look forward to working with partners in Scotland and the wider UK to overturn this divisive and disastrous Brexit.”

Walking for Europe: Europe Day 2022

Edinburgh4Europe will mark Europe Day by launching two new EuroWalks in Edinburgh, highlighting connections with our European neighbours. 

 What will you do on Europe Day this year? The European Movement in Scotland (EMiS) will mark the day by celebrating Scotland’s historic, and contemporary, links with our European neighbours. They have created a series of EuroWalks across Scotland to take in local landmarks with connections to European figures, places or historical events. 

 Edinburgh4Europe, the local EMiS group, is delighted to welcome Ben Macpherson (MSP for Edinburgh Northern and Leith) for the official opening of their Leith EuroWalk on Saturday, 7th May, at 11am outside the Custom House in Leith (65-67 Commercial Street). 

The EuroWalk highlights a variety of Leith’s links to Europe, including Mary of Guise, Norwegian whalers and trades with the Baltic states.

 On Monday, 9th May, a group of EMiS  volunteers will lead a guided tour on a EuroWalk around Calton Hill.

The walk will start at 5.30pm from the Paolozzi Statues on Picardy Place: 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/europe-day-eurowalk-edinburgh-tickets-331385702557.

 The walking routes, with photos and information, can be found at this link: link: https://eurowalks.scot/, so these can be followed in person or investigated from your own home.

Looking to the future, the plan is to continue the growth of EuroWalks in collaboration with organisations such as Visit Scotland and to create a network of walks across Scotland, in cities, towns and the countryside, which collectively help us to celebrate our rich European heritage.

EMiS hopes these will achieve the twin aim of educating local residents (including the tens of thousands of European citizens who live in Scotland) and teaching visitors more about the connections between their own countries and Scotland.   

 EMiS wants this to be a truly collaborative, grassroots venture, drawing on ideas from people and communities across Scotland. Most of all, they hope to demonstrate the rich variety and scope of Scotland’s ties to the European continent.  Because Europe is our past, Europe is our present and Europe is our future.

 If you want to join in this enjoyable volunteer-led initiative, or have ideas or knowledge about a local European connection to include, please contact the EuroWalks team at walks4europe@gmail.com.

 Edinburgh4Europe:

 Edinburgh for Europe is a group that came together during the campaign in 2018 for a People’s Vote on the deal secured by the UK government to leave the EU. We are made up of people who are Scottish or EU citizens or both.

We are affiliated to the European Movement in Scotland, a movement which started after World War II and before the economic union began. We work to maintain good relations with citizens of European countries and to mitigate the effects of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

European Movement in Scotland backs EU membership for Ukraine

The European Movement in Scotland (EMiS) condemns Russia’s indiscriminate war against Ukraine and stands in solidarity with Ukrainian’s in their struggle to defend peace, democracy and freedom – the values that underpin Europe’s history and culture.

We therefore support the application of President Zelensky and his government for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union according to the Copenhagen criteria and welcome the backing given by some EU member states for Ukraine to be granted immediate applicant status.

The EU has throughout this conflict, unprecedented on European territory for almost 80 years, taken the lead in providing humanitarian, economic and military aid to Ukraine and imposing effective sanctions against the Putin regime and its financial backers.

EMiS especially welcomes the EU’s decision to activate the temporary protection directive allowing millions of Ukrainian refugees to enter its member states’ territory visa-free and to live and work within its borders for up to three years.

This stands in stark contrast to the chaotic and deplorable approach of the UK Government towards imposing bureaucratic hurdles on tens of thousands of desperate families fleeing a savage war.

EMiS also welcomes the clear evidence that working together in solidarity with a fellow European nation has enabled the EU-27 to play a key role in the search for an equitable peace in the region, based on the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty enshrined in international law.

We believe this further exposes the lies and myths that lay behind Brexit and underpin the grand illusion of Global Britain. It strengthens the case for the UK and Scotland to pursue closer relations with our EU neighbours and partners up to and including early moves to rejoin the European Union.

EMiS launches campaign for Scotland to rejoin the EU

The European Movement in Scotland (EMiS), the country’s leading pro-EU body, is today urging Scots to defy Brexit and fight to rejoin the European Union.

EMiS is launching its own campaign for Scotland to rejoin the European Union as swiftly as possible – whatever its constitutional status.

Tier 4 restrictions have forced the cancellation of planned street protests against Brexit up and down the country, including at the Scottish Parliament and UK Government hub in the capital.

Instead, EMiS members and supporters will be protesting wherever and however possible against a bad deal on future EU-UK relations that poses a serious threat to Scotland’s future and that of its younger generations.

Mark Lazarowicz, EMiS convenor, says: ” With all the crises the world faces, the argument for the European Union is stronger than ever – and opinion polls show that support for EU membership is higher than it was at the time of the 2016 referendum, both in Scotland and across the whole of the UK.

“Whether Scotland becomes part of the EU again as an independent nation state, or through the UK as a whole, we know it will not happen overnight. But being a realist doesn’t mean we stop campaigning for our country to be part of that wider European project again.” 

Today marks the end of UK membership of the EU Single Market and Customs Union. From 1 January 2021, more than 5m Scots will lose the right to live, travel and work freely in 31 other European countries.  

As we prepare for this sad day, we in the European Movement in Scotland are united in this pledge:

“We declare that Scotland is a European country, embracing our common values of peace, democracy, human rights, equality, sustainability and solidarity.

The clear wish of the great majority of the Scottish people is that Scotland should be within the European Union.

We commit to working to bring this about, whatever Scotland’s constitutional status”.

The pledge can be signed at: http://chng.it/DpBZpy8J

We are calling on as many as possible to share pictures of themselves displaying the EU stars – a symbol of European unity – in some form, accompanied by the hashtag #WeWillBeBack.

We urge all those who feel the same to join us at the European Movement in Scotland (euromovescotland.org.uk @euromovescot), so that our fellow Europeans can hear us loud and clear!

eu+me: group welcomes launch of new campaign for Europe

Campaign group European Movement in Scotland (EMiS) has welcomed the launch of eu+me, a new campaign to bolster our ties with Europe.

EMiS Chair Mark Lazarowicz commented: “As Scotland’s leading pro-EU campaign organisation, the European Movement in Scotland (EMiS) is delighted to welcome the launch of eu+me.

“The fact that almost three quarters of people in Scotland think that we would weather the economic storms caused by coronavirus better if the UK remained part of the EU, with 65 per cent of the population regretting the UK’s decision to leave the EU, should not come as any surprise.

“It is great that yet more people from across the political spectrum are asserting the settled view of the majority of voters in Scotland that our place is at the heart of Europe.

“As Scotland’s largest membership organisation dedicated to promoting our EU future, and with members from all the political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament, EMiS looks forward to working closely with eu+me.

“With every passing day we see the bleak con that is Brexit and the damage it is doing to our country, already reeling from Covid and blindly charging towards a Brexit cliff-edge. 

“Being part of the EU offers us a dynamic, prosperous and sustainable Scotland, working in co-operation with our European friends on the basis of EU values of democracy, equality and solidarity.”