Daniel Hannan

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Daniel Hannan, 2011

Daniel John Hannan (born September 1, 1971 in Lima , Peru ) is a British journalist and politician of the Conservative Party and was a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to January 31, 2020 . Since 2010 he has been general secretary of the newly founded European party Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR), of which the Conservative Party is a member. Hannan is known as an EU skeptic .

Life

Hannan was born on his parents' farm near Lima . After spending his childhood in Peru, he attended Marlborough College and Oriel College at Oxford University , where he studied contemporary history. In 1992 he became chairman of the Oxford University Conservative Association , although his EU-skeptical positions led to controversy as early as 1991 when the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell accused him of xenophobia . 1992/93 he was vice president of the national student union of the Conservative Party; 1994 to 1999 Chairman of the Association of Conservative University Graduates (1994–1999). In 1995 he became a board member of the European Young Conservatives.

From 1994 to 1999 he was head of the EU-skeptical think tank European Research Group . From 1996 he worked as an editor of editorials for the conservative Daily Telegraph . He also wrote articles for The Spectator magazine and other international newspapers and magazines, including Die Welt and Weltwoche . In 1997 he became advisor and speechwriter to Michael Howard , who at that time was the foreign policy member of the Conservative shadow cabinet , and later for the Conservative party leader William Hague .

Member of the European Parliament

In the 1999 European elections , Hannan was elected to the European Parliament . In the European elections in 2004 and 2009 , he was able to regain his seat. Like the other members of the Conservative Party, he first joined the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats (EPP-ED) in 1999 . From 1999 to 2002 he was a member of the Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs , and from 2002 to 2007 of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs . After that he was a member of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection until 2008 and the Committee on Fisheries from 2008 to 2009 . From 2009 to 2011 he was a member of the Legal Committee ; from 2011 he was again a member of the committee for constitutional questions.

In 2008 there was a scandal surrounding Hannan after he did not finish his speech in a debate on the Lisbon Treaty, despite exceeding his speaking time. After his microphone had been muted, Hannan declared that it was only respect for the President of the European Parliament , Hans-Gert Pöttering , that prevented him from comparing the recently decided new regulation of speaking times in Parliament with the Enabling Act of 1933. Since Pöttering, as a CDU member, belonged to the same group in the European Parliament as Hannan, an internal conflict arose and the group leader Joseph Daul initiated a group expulsion process against Hannan. Thereupon Hannan resigned himself from the parliamentary group on February 19, 2008 and remained a non-attached MP for the remainder of the legislature.

On March 24, 2009, Hannan became well known in the English-speaking world after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a short speech in the European Parliament , to which Hannan responded in a three-minute speech in which he sharply criticized Brown's response to the 2007 financial crisis . The YouTube video of this speech received a large number of views within a short period of time. Hannan was then invited to various television shows and appeared, among others, in Glenn Beck's program on the American Fox News Channel . British TV channels such as the BBC , however, reported little on the speech, for which they were criticized by the Conservative Party.

After the European elections in 2009 , the members of the Conservative Party left the EPP-ED group and took part in the founding of the new conservative-EU-skeptical group European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which Hannan also joined. In addition, the ECR members founded a new European political party , the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR), of which Hannan became General Secretary. From 2009 to 2014 Hannan was a member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly . He was a deputy in the delegation for relations with the countries of the Andean Community and the delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly. From his re-election in 2014, Hannan was a member of the Petitions Committee and a deputy in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs.

Political positions

Hannan is known as an EU skeptic and, among other things, rejected the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in the European Parliament . He also advocated an end to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia , declaring in 2007 that the influence of international law on national affairs "creates the opportunity for a dictatorship far worse than that of Milošević, " as un democratically elected courts over democratic politicians could judge. Hannan supported Britain's participation in the Afghan War in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks . However , he refused to participate in the Iraq war .

Hannan also advocates libertarian positions, such as the legalization of drugs , and advocates institutional reforms in British electoral law that should give voters more influence over the composition of Parliament. In 2008 he supported Barack Obama's candidacy for President of the United States and accused his opponents, among other things, of campaigning for large national budgets. In 2010, however, he revoked his support for Obama and declared that “Obamification” would lead America into a state that can already be seen in Europe in the European Parliament.

Publications

In addition to articles in numerous British and international newspapers, Hannan has published several books, each of which deals critically with aspects of European integration and calls for a return to more national sovereignty. Specifically, these are Time for a Fresh Start in Europe (1993) A Guide to the Amsterdam Treaty (1997), The Euro: Bad for Business (1998), The Challenge of the East (1999), What if Britain Votes No? (2002), The Case for EFTA (2004) and The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America (2010). He also gave the book Treason at Maastricht together with Rodney Atkinson and Norris McWhirter . Destruction of the Nation State (1994). In 2005 he and 27 other Conservative Party MPs published the book Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party , which among other things called for more decentralization in British politics. In 2008 he published the political program book The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain with Douglas Carswell .

For his blog on the homepage of the Daily Telegraph , Hannan received the 2009 Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism, a journalism prize awarded by the British conservative think tank International Policy Network .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Blair, and ed. Andrew Page, The History of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA, Oxford, 1995), p. 38.
  2. ↑ The Times , May 17, 1997, p. 22: Latin Link .
  3. ^ YouTube , March 24, 2009: Daniel Hannan MEP: The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government .
  4. ↑ John Bingham, Anita Singh, Daily Telegraph , March 27, 2009: Questions for BBC and ITV over Daniel Hannan speech coverage .
  5. ^ Daniel Hannan on the website of the European Parliament
  6. ↑ [1]
  7. ^ Daniel Hannan, The Daily Telegraph , February 26, 2007: He went unsung to his grave .
  8. ↑ Daniel Hannan, The Daily Telegraph , October 18, 2008: Why this conservative is for Barack Obama .
  9. ^ Daniel Hannan, The Daily Telegraph , June 14, 2010: I admit it: I was wrong to have supported Barack Obama (English).
personal data
SURNAME Hannan, Daniel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hannan, Daniel John (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Conservative Party politician, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH 1st September 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH Lima , Peru