Parliament set to probe Libertas’s ‘anti-EU’ support

EUROPEAN Parliament heads will today discuss setting up a committee of inquiry into whether anti-EU elements helped fund the Libertas campaign in Ireland.

Libertas founder Declan Ganley has dismissed the allegations describing it as “classic dis-information” and was critical of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Parliament’s Green group, who raised the issue earlier this week.

Mr Cohn-Bendit said that, if allegations that anti-EU sources in the US Pentagon or CIA had funded the no campaign were true, it raised grave concerns for interference in next year’s European elections.

However, Mr Ganley, whose company has earned more than $32m from providing emergency communications systems for the US military, yesterday described the suggestions as outrageous and a lie.

“This is an outrageous attempt to distract people from the issue which is about the Lisbon treaty. This is disgusting, Stasi-like, a categorical lie, it’s just ridiculous, nuts,” he said.

He described a similar request for transparency by parliament president Hans Gert Pottering as “shrill” and said such CIA conspiracy theories were patronising Irish voters. He said reports that he had questioned Mr Pottering’s past were “a mix-up”. However he said it was not up to him to prove where the funding for Libertas came from, “this is like being asked to prove you do not beat your wife”.

He could not say when the decision will be made on whether Libertas will field candidates.

“We are taking a business-like approach to this and until we have gathered sufficient information we will not take a decision,” said Mr Ganley, adding that one of the issues that will decide the matter will be whether they have candidates to win seats.

Mr Ganley has been in Paris and Warsaw this week as part of his research into whether he has enough support to launch a pan-EU party to contest next June’s parliament elections.

Mr Ganley is reported to have had contact with the League of Polish Families which have 15 MEPs, five of them with the UEN (Union for Europe of the Nations) of which Fianna Fáil is a member, and ten with the Independence and Democracy group of which Kathy Sinnott is co-president.

The prospect of the league’s MEPs retaining their seats is slim given that they lost all of the 37 seats they held in the Polish parliament in last year’s general election.

He also spoke to Marek Jurek, of the Right of the Republic party who resigned from the Polish parliament two years ago after it failed to amend the Constitution removing the right to abortion in the case of rape and when a mothers’ health is threatened.

On Sunday, he addressed the conference of the French Eurosceptic party, Movement pour la France (MPF), in Paris together with British Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.

MPF, socially conservative and economic liberals, has three members in the European Parliament and campaigned for a no vote in France during the referendum on the constitution. They are also members of the Independence Democracy group.

Danish eurosceptic and former MEP, Jens-Peter Bonde, is acting as a consultant and adviser to Mr Ganley, but said that Danish and Swedish members of his European Democracy party would not be joining Libertas.