Libertas Partei Deutschland | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Carlos A. Gebauer, Eva Schoeller |
| Founded | March 3, 2009 |
| Headquarters | Unter den Linden 21 10117 Berlin [1] |
| Ideology | Euroscepticism |
| European affiliation | Libertas.eu |
| Colours | blue, gold |
| Website | |
| libertas-deutschland.de | |
Libertas Germany (German : Libertas Partei Deutschland) is a eurosceptic German political party founded in 2009. It is a member of the pan-European movement Libertas.eu established to impede the Lisbon Treaty.
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol in Italy, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and Liechtenstein. It is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages that are most similar to the German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.
Euroscepticism, also known as EU-scepticism, means criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies and seek reform, to those who oppose EU membership outright and see the EU as unreformable. The opposite of Euroscepticism is known as pro-Europeanism, or European Unionism. Euroscepticism should not be confused with anti-Europeanism, which is a dislike of European culture and European ethnic groups by non-Europeans.
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north and the Alps, Lake Constance and the High Rhine to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.
In March 2009 the foundation of Libertas Germany was disclosed at a press conference in Berlin. Carlos A. Gebauer and Eva Schoeller were presented as candidates for chairperson. [2]
Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3,748,148 (2018) inhabitants make it the second most populous city proper of the European Union after London. The city is one of Germany's 16 federal states. It is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and contiguous with Potsdam, Brandenburg's capital. The two cities are at the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region, which is, with about six million inhabitants and an area of more than 30,000 km², Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions.
However, Libertas Germany failed to obtain 4.000 certified signatures by the end of March to register for the 2009 Euroelections. [3] [4] This failure was described by the Irish Times as "a major blow to the organisation’s pan-European ambitions". [5]
The European Parliament election of 2009 in Germany was the German part of the 2009 European Parliament election. The voting was held on Sunday, 7 June. A total of 26 parties competed for the 99 seats reserved for Germany in the European Parliament. In the previous election of 2004, the six parties which were represented in the German national parliament (Bundestag) from 2005 to 2013, had entered the European Parliament by overcoming the 5% election threshold. The same parties entered the European Parliament this time. None of the other parties managed to gain more than 1.7%, but together the small parties exceeded 10% for the first time. At 43.3%, the voter turnout was just over the all-time low in the previous European election in Germany (43.0%).
Instead, the pan-European mother party Libertas.eu found by May 2009 a German affiliate in the small Christian conservative party AUF in order to pursue its pan-European ambitions for the 2009 European Elections. However, as AUF had already filed its electoral lists, the list name did not include the name Libertas, unlike the affiliate lists in the other European countries. [6] [7] [8]
