An ELDR delegation composed of Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck MEP, ELDR Party President; Kristiina Ojuland MEP; and Michael Jensen MP were in Moscow last week to attend a conference organised by ELDR member, the People's Democratic Union, about the future direction of Russia and how the country might co-operate better with the European Union. This event took place in the framework of the ELDR Party political and information activities scheme. Read more ...

A network of Iberian liberal parties, think-tanks,and political organisations has been formally created today. This follows a meeting in Salamanca of Iberian liberal organisations on 27-28 June and a preliminary meeting held in Cadiz on 23 March. Read more ...

In its meeting of Friday 18 June, the ELDR Bureau welcomed the election results of Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) from Slovakia. The party, which is led by the architect of the Slovakian flat-tax system Richard Sulik, obtained 12.14% of the votes and 22 seats in the parliamentary elections of Saturday 12 June, making it the third-largest party in Slovakia's parliament and one of the most successful liberal parties in Central Europe in recent history. Read more ...

Opening today's ELDR Party conference "€URonomics - Bailout or Bust?" about the future of the euro zone, Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck MEP, President of the European Liberal Democrats, talked of the need to have cautious optimism for the future of the euro and noted that Europe and it's economy would be far worse off if the single currency would be allowed to collapse. Furthermore, liberals consider that banks must fulfill their individual responsibilities and should not be exempt from free market principles. In this regard banks and their managers must fulfill their obligation towards their customers, with shareholders the ones footing the bill for any future mismanagement, rather than taxpayers. Read more ...

Finnish Minister for Culture and Sport, Stefan Wallin, was last weekend re-appointed as Party Leader of Svenska Folkpartiet for another year at the party’s congress which took place in Tammerfors, Finland. Read more ...

Over the past weekend, ELDR Finnish Member Party Keskusta (Centre Party) elected Mari Kiviniemi as its new leader. The congress, held in the city of Lahti, convened some 2 500 official delegates and a similar amount of guests and press making the Keskusta Congress one of the world's largest. Read more ...

On Sunday 13 June, more than seven million Belgians were invited to cast their ballot in elections for both the House of Representatives and 40 seats in the Senate. These early elections were made necessary after the Belgian federal government, led by the Christian Democrat Prime Minister Yves Leterme, collapsed in April of this year over deadlock on economic questions as well as the lingering question of the electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde - the last remaining in Belgium where it is possible to vote for either Dutch or French speaking political parties. Read more ...

Carlos Alberto Montaner (picture) believes that Cuba is now at a crossroads between the long-standing negation of reality and a potentially drastic change, similar to the one facilitated by Gorbachev in Russia. Read more ...

The VVD has won the Dutch parliamentary elections on Wednesday 9 June, becoming the number one party in the Netherlands for the first time in its 62 year history, with 20.4% of the votes. The election night started with exit polls showing the Liberals and Labour running neck-and-neck, but when 90% of the votes were counted the VVD took the lead with 31 seats (an increase of 9 seats) against 30 for Labour, which lost three seats. Read more ...

International security and the future of the Dutch defence policy was the theme of an ELDR sponsored political and information activity organized by the Dutch liberals of VVD on Tuesday 1 June in The Hague. Read more ...