Today, we continue our high-level European training with the second round in Strasbourg!  After an intense first 4-day conference in Brussels in March, the same 70 selected participants will come together again at the heart of the Strasbourg-based European institutions.

Journalists, political staff and NGO leaders  from 28 European countries are being trained for the next three days in advocacy at the Council of Europe – Europe’s largest human rights institution with 47 member states – and in the European Court of Human Rights system. On the agenda are numerous training sessions and case studies of court cases regarding freedom and subsidiarity in Europe, religious freedom, marriage & family, hate speech and bioethics.

 Speakers include experts in international litigation, such as...

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Today, European Dignity Watch launched its new report on funding of abortion through EU tax payer’s money. The report shows: although it’s neither an EU competence nor backed by EU law, the European Commission collaborates closely and in numerous projects with the two world’s largest abortion providers: International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International.

The objective of this report is to document how IPPF and MSI have been receiving, and continue to receive funding from the European Union’s Development Aid and Public Health budgets for projects related to “sexual and reproductive health” (SRH).

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Starting from today, 70 journalists, political advisors, young academics, and NGO leaders from all over Europe come together in Brussels for the European Advocacy Academy (EAA).

The four-day conference, held in the heart of the EU institutions, is the first part of a high-level political training program organized by European Dignity Watch. 28 countries will be represented, from Spain to Sweden and from Ireland to Georgia. Despite this great geographic and cultural diversity, participants share a common vision of life and society with core values such as freedom and responsiblity, justice, subsidiarity, the importance of a strong civil society based on the family, in one word: universal social ethics based on the dignity of the person.

The EAA responds to an urgent need of understanding the European dimension of these crucial issues that are not only at the centre of policies and legislation, but also at the heart of the crisis. This need is being constantly voiced by politically engaged persons from all over Europe and beyond. The EAA participants thus come with great awareness of the impact of EU policies in these matters and of the need for a strong European network of likeminded stakeholders.

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On March 27th, 2012 at the European Parliament European Dignity Watch will present a new report entitled The Funding of Abortion through EU Development Aid. This unparalleled report will show how two world’s leading abortion providers - International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Marie Stopes International - have received, and continue to receive funding from European Union’s development and public health budgets for projects related to so-called Sexual and Reproductive Health, and among those, for abortions.

The Funding of Abortion through EU Development Aid report documents how the EU is providing grants to the organizations perpetrating abortions worldwide and how this leads to serious legal conflicts. The European Commission as established by the principle of conferral and subsidiary and as underlined by the institution itself does not have the legal authority to fund abortion - and does it nevertheless year by year with millions of Euro.

Based on a great amount of material that the European Commission has disclosed on our repeated request, the report discusses delicate questions: How much money is given to the organizations that clearly present an increased access to both surgical and medical abortion as one of their key strategies? Is this negligence on the part of the European Commission or is it done deliberately? Who is responsible for such a misuse of the European funds?

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Yesterday, on January 25, 2012, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a  Resolution stating that “euthanasia must always be prohibited.” This articulates a strong principle for life and against euthanasia, given that, for the first time, euthanasia has been so clearly rejected by a European political institution. 
 
This is a third major victory for life and dignity of the weakest, after the 2010 resolution that strengthened freedom of conscience for doctors and medical staff and after the European Court of Human Rights asserted last year that there is no right to euthanasia or assisted suicide under the European Convention.

The resolution passed yesterday states in §5: “Euthanasia, in the sense of the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, must always be prohibited.”

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