In recent days the Expo Foundation in Sweden has launched a campaign against the pan-European party the Alliance for Peace and Freedom, and our Foundation, Europa Terra Nostra. Now SVT News (Swedish state television) has also decided to join the propaganda drive, completely failing even to contact us to ask for our comments. We take this opportunity to publish some clarifications.
Our operation is completely legal and follows all the rules of the Parliament. Our respective requests for financial support from the European Parliament were examined very carefully, and because we are democratic organisations that follow all the rules, there was no possibility to deny us the right to work on the same terms as everyone else.
The Alliance for Peace and Freedom represents, through our member parties, over a million voters in the EU and has four elected members in the European Parliament. To prevent us from working in the same way as other parties would be to say that these people‘s votes are not as valuable as other votes, which would stand in sharp contrast to the democratic ideals that the European Union claims to represent.
Europa Terra Nostra foundation Chairman Dan Ericksson, well-known as one of the voices of Motgift (“The Antidote” Radio), has called the far-left plan to deny nationalist voters their rights, “typical neo-Marxist bigotry”.
The MEP Fredrick Federley from the Swedish Center party has also said in a statement to the news agency TT that “it is our taxes that we pay in fairly high fees to the Union and part of them goes to this”, which Federley believes is “totally unacceptable”.
However, the more than a million voters behind the APF‘s member parties also of course pay the tax that goes to fund the EU‘s massive bureaucracy. If these voters’ representatives, as elected politicians, were prevented from sharing the resources provided by the European Union in the same way as other politicians, it would be unfair to say the least. By the same logic these voters would then not need to pay the taxes that go to the Union.
But it is not the way it works today, and as long as we all have to pay for the European Union, we should all also have the same rights and opportunities to take part in the system on behalf of our voters and supporters.
We have nothing against scrutiny or criticism of our political positions, but when political opponents try to restrict our opportunities, in which all legal and democratically structured organisations are entitled to participate on the same terms as everyone else, they are on very thin ice.
Stefan Jacobsson
Secretery General, Alliance for Peace and Freedom
Dan Eriksson
Chairman, Europa Nostra Terra
This article has previously been published on Sweden‘s largest alternative news site, Fria Tider.
http://www.friatider.se/v-ra-v-ljare-betalar-ocks-skatt
