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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)