History
UEN was formed on 20 July 1999, supplanting the earlier Union for Europe. Its member parties Fianna Fáil (FF) and National Alliance (AN) were the driving forces behind the group, despite their being alone in their support for the proposed European Constitution. Gianfranco Fini, leader of AN, was a member of the Convention which drafted the Constitution, while Bertie Ahern, leader of FF, negotiated the treaty as President of the European Council in 2004.
UEN was a heterogeneous group: broadly national conservative, it included some parties which were either uncomfortable with this characterization or eventually evolved into something different. More specifically, FF was a centre right "catch all" party and later joined the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party, AN was a moderate-conservative party and eventually joined the European People's Party through The People of Freedom, and Lega Nord was supportive of a "Europe of Regions".
After the 2009 European elections the group officially had 35 members but this figure included parties such as AN and FF, which had already committed to leave. UEN members migrated to other groups after the elections in June 2009 and before the Seventh European Parliament term started on 14 July 2009. FF had already left for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, TB/LNNK and Law and Justice MEPs went to the European Conservatives and Reformists, and Lega Nord, the Danish People's Party and Order and Justice MEPs went to Europe of Freedom and Democracy. With this loss of members, the group dissolved.
Read more about this topic: Union For Europe Of The Nations
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“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
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