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Born in West Germany, Lothar Bisky moved to the east and joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
Source: Europarliament
Lothar Bisky was born in 1941 in Zollbrück (now Korzybie, Poland) and grew up in West Germany before deciding to move to East German when he was 18 where he joined the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
After completing university he worked as an academic on film, media and communication.
After the fall of the Berlin wall he was elected to the East German Parliament. From 1993 he was chairman of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), successor of the SED, which after a merger became in 2007 The Left (Die Linke).
Since 2007 he is the President of the European Left party. He is married and the father of three sons and was first elected to the EP in June 2009.
Former flight engineer Francesco Speroni will co-Chair with London born Nigel Farage
Source: Europarliament
Co-Chair Nigel Farage (45) from London was a commodity broker until he became a professional politician.
From his early youth until the resignation of Margaret Thatcher he was active in the Conservative Party.
In 1993 he became on of the founding members of the United Kingdom Independence Party which seeks withdrawal from the European Union and a Europe with little political integration.
He was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and 2009.
Since 2006 he leads the UKIP party and he was co-chair of the Independence and Democracy Group in the previous term of the EP.
Co-Chair Francesco Enrico Speroni (62) from Lombardy was elected to the EP for the fourth time in June 2009.
Before the June elections of this year he was vice-chair of the Legal Affairs Committee.
He was a member of local, regional and the Italian national parliament for Lega Nord since the 1980s and in 1994 was Minister for Institutional reforms within the first government of Silvio Berlusconi.
He is known for positions critical of critical of further European integration and enlargement, notably towards Turkey.
He holds a degree in political sciences and law, and a trained flight engineer.
Warsaw born Michał Kamiński has been described as a 'Euro-sceptic, free-market Atlanticist'
Source: Europarliament
Michał Kamiński was born in March 1972 in Warsaw. He became politically active at the age of 15 in national conservative and catholic opposition movements.
Mr Kaminski was first elected to the European Parliament for the Law and Justice party in 2004 where he became a member of the Internal Market committee and vice chair of the group Union for a Europe of Nations.
In July 2007 he left the EP to work as Secretary of State in the Chancellery of Polish President Lech Kaczyński for whom Kamiński, a former journalist, acted as the spokesperson.
With the June 2009 elections he returned to the European Parliament where he was a key player in the forming of the new ECR group.
He has been described by a member of his group as a “Euro-sceptic, free-market Atlanticist” and admirer of Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. He is father of two girls.
he European Commission took another step to promote the LTE standard for the fourth generation of wireless telecommunications by announcing a further investment of €18 million in this technology, de facto ditching the alternative WiMax.
Source: EurActiv [edited]
The European Commission took another step to promote the LTE standard for the fourth generation of wireless telecommunications by announcing a further investment of €18 million in this technology, de facto ditching the alternative WiMax.
Although many consumers in the EU have yet to experience the services provided by 3G networks, the EU Executive announced its support for an evolution of the trialed 4G technologies, the so-called LTE Advanced, expected to enable Internet speeds a hundred times higher than those of 3G networks.
The new funding will be released next January and follows €25 million that Brussels has already invested in research on LTE between 2004 and 2007.
Even if the Commission officially keeps the door open for WiMax, it appears clear that, by further funding its competitor, Brussels has already made a political decision with important economic consequences.
“It is the first time the Commission clearly comes out in favour of LTE”, an official from the Commission acknowledged to EurActiv.
“With LTE technologies, Europe’s research ‘know-how’ will continue to set the tone for the development of mobile services and devices around the globe, just as we did in the past decades with the GSM standard,” pointed out Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding.
Indeed the GSM standard (also referred as 2G second generation mobile phone system) was so successful because Brussels singled it out, thereby ditching all the alternatives.
Winners and losers
The announcement from the Commission is good news for the consortium composed by Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and others which support the LTE standard.
Many EU telecoms operators, among which T-Mobile, Orange and Telia Sonera, have already committed to using LTE and invest nearly €6 billion by 2013, according to figures reported by the Commission in a note.
Brussels’ move will instead hit the consortium supporting WiMax. The hardest hit will be Intel which leads the WiMax venture. This adds to the problems the US chipmaker is already experiencing with the EU Executive for its anticompetitive behaviour, which triggered the highest fine ever imposed by Brussels .
In the WiMax consortium there are also US Cisco, Clearwire and Sprint, and Korea Samsung. Many Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese operators also support the WiMax standard.
The Qualcomm’s dilemma
The EU’s push towards LTE and the contrasting attempts from the WiMax consortium bring forward the question: will the patents necessary to develop 4G networks be available for the standard developers?
If a patent holder is reluctant to participate in a venture, the entire project could fail. It is like buying all the material and the know-how to build a house, but lacking the authorisation to begin construction.
The US giant chipmaker Qualcomm is thought to hold several key patents to develop 4G standards. At the moment, Qualcomm is not siding either with the LTE or the WiMax.
But, the European Commission has a card up its sleeve. Qualcomm has been under investigation in Brussels since 2007, for alleged abuse of its dominant position whilst holding patents to develop the 3G standard.
Veteran political radical Daniel Cohn-Bendit is joined by anti-nuclear campaigner Rebecca Harms
Source: Europarliament
Co-Chair Rebecca Harms (53) has led the German Green list for the European Parliament both in the 2004 and 2009 elections.
While she worked as an MEP’s assistant in the 1980s, the trained landscape gardener is known in Germany especially for her involvement in the anti-nuclear power movement and civil disobedience against a planned deposit site for nuclear waste in her native state of Lower Saxony.
Accordingly, much of her work in the European Parliament has also focussed on energy policy.
Co-Chair Daniel Cohn-Bendit (64), son of a German father and a French mother, he came to be known in both countries through his role in the 1968 student protests in Paris. Not having French nationality he was forced to leave France in the autumn of 1968.
In West Germany he became also an influential figure of the left and a friend of one-time German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. He joined the Green party in 1984 and has been an MEP continuously since 1994, being elected alternately in both France and Germany.
Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt was elected in June 2009 to the European Parliament
Source: Europarliament
Guy Verhofstadt was born in 1953 in Dendermonde, Flanders, Belgium.
In the early 70’s, he was active in the Flemish Liberal Student’s Union while studying law in Ghent.
In 1982, at the young age of 29, he became president of the Party for Freedom and Progress (PVV). In 1985 he was elected into the Chamber of Deputies, and became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget.
Due to his initially very liberal stance in economic matters and his young age he was nicknamed “The Kid” and “Baby Thatcher”.
He became Prime Minister in July 1999. After his premiership he took up the seat of Senator to which he had been elected in 2007. In June 2009 he was elected to the EP for the first time.
Martin Schulz has led the Socialists in the European Parliament since 2004
Source: Europarliament
Martin Schulz (53) was born in the German town of Hehlrath, close to the Belgian and Dutch border.
At the age of 19, one year after he joined the Social Democrats, he started work as a bookseller in various bookshops and publishing houses including from 1982 his own shop.
In the 1980s and early 1990s he was politically active a local and regional level.
First elected to the European Parliament in 1994 where he was active in the Human Rights and the Civil Liberties committees before taking on senior positions in the Socialist group.
In July 2003 he famously clashed with Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, in the Parliamentary Chamber when the latter jokingly recommended him for a film role as a Kapo (concentration-camp inmate appointed as supervisor).
In 2004 he was first elected leader of the Socialist group and after the 2009 elections was confirmed as the leader of the Socialists and Democrats in the EP.
Joseph Daul was first elected in 1999 to the European Parliament
Source: Europarliament
Joseph Daul was born two years after World War II in Strasbourg.
Having studied agriculture he took over the small family farm at the age of 20 which is today still run by one of his two children. Early on he became active in farmers union and rural youth movements and later on farmers associations at national and European level.
Himself a cattle farmer, he was Chair of the National Federation of Beef Producers in France when the mad cow diseases affected European farmers and consumers.
Mr Daul was first elected in 1999 to the European Parliament where he became chair of the Agricultural Committee in 2002 and chair of the European People’s Party – European Democrats group in January 2007.
He speaks French and Alsatian, his native language, and is fluent in German.
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