MEDIA RELEASE
26 October 2005

Embargo: none

EU LEADERS TO MISS THE 'ELEPHANT IN
THE ROOM' AT HAMPTON COURT

Democracy campaigners plan an eye-catching stunt at the Hampton Court summit on Thursday, to highlight the failure of EU leaders to recognise and respond to the EU's fundamental flaws.

A pantomime elephant-in-the-room will be studiously ignored by 'Tony Blair' (a protestor in a Blair mask).

Today's EU is over-centralised and out of date - a product of 'big is best', top-down, elitist thinking stuck in the 1950s.

Yet EU leaders plan to fiddle at the margins of the EU's problems with vastly expensive schemes like a 'globalisation fund', while overlooking the fact that the basic idea of the EU is fatally flawed.

Rigid, centralised decision-making can neither suit the different needs and wants of Europe's diverse countries nor respond quickly and flexibly enough to rapid global change.

Marc Glendening, DM campaign director said:

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STUNT LOCATION & TIME: main entrance to Hampton Court Palace (nearest the river), 11am, 27th October 2005.

FURTHER COMMENT: Marc Glendening, DM Campaign Director, Tel: 020 8570 5681 or e-mail

Notes:

1. The Democracy Movement is a non-party campaign to dismantle and replace the EU with the Europe of Democracies - a constructive, modern alternative to today's highly-centralised, out-dated EU.