Shirin Ebadi, Iranian lawyer, Human Rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize 2003 was today in the European Council at the COHOM – Human Rights Committee – meeting in presence of Riina Kionka, Personal Representative for Human Rights of the High Representative for the EU’s CFSP Javier Solana.

In her statement she called the European Union to be more active in Iran regarding the Human Rights situation in her country. She urged the European Union to ask Iran to hold the violence and the killing and arrests of people. If Iran refuses to do that and the violence continues she urged the EU to ask its governments to recall their ambassadors from Iran with immediate effect.

EU heads of state and government were still meeting late evening Thursday after Jose Manuel Barroso presented his vision for the next five years. Update by EUX.TV editor Raymond Frenken, at the summit in Brussels.

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the President of the Party of European Socialists, told journalists on Thursday that the parliament needs to be consulted on appointing a new president of the European Commission.

EU Heads of state are due to approve Jose Manuel Barroso’s second term as Commission President later on Thursday, but several parties in the parliament, including the socialists, are not convinced that Barroso is the right man for the job.

Graham Watson, leader of the liberal-democrat ALDE group in the European Parliament, wants the European Council, the body that unites the governments of the member states, to make a ‘legally binding’ proposal on the next president of the European Commission. Watson made his comment on Thursday ahead of the EU heads of state summit in Brussels.

Joseph Daul, President of the European People’s Party, the biggest group in the European Parliament, on Thursday said that if the EU heads of state later today propose to nominate Jose Manuel Barroso for another five-year term as President of Europe’s top executive body, the European Commission, then his group will propose to let the parliament vote on this in the July 15 session in Strasbourg.

The July plenary session will be the first with all the new parliament members that were elected in the European elections earlier this month.

Hans-Gert Poettering, the President of the European Parliament – who is supposed to stand above the political parties in the parliament – on Thursday expressed his clear support for Jose Manuel Barroso as president of the European Commission in the 2009-2014 period.

Poettering belongs to the European People’s Party, which also is Barroso’s club. EU heads of state on Thursday night are expected to grant Barroso a second term as Commission president.

As European Union heads of state and government, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, arrive in Brussels for today’s June 2009 EU Summit, they are facing pressure from opposition groups in the European parliament, led by Greens/EFA co-president Daniel Cohn-Bendit, not to grant another five-year term as Commission President to Jose Manuel Barroso.

Agt a press conference, Cohn-Bendit explains why he feels Barroso should not be given a new term

EUX.TV presents ‘Covering Europe; European journalists analyzing the state of Europe.’

In this June 2009 post-election edition, EUX.TV moderator Raymond Frenken sits down with Lisbeth Kirk, editor of EUobserver.com; Swedish freelance journalist Teresa Kuchler; New Europe editor Alex Koronakis; and Stafford Wadsworth, editor of Meuse Rhine Journal.

Together, they analyze the impact of the European elections on the EU process, the new composition of the European parliament, including the Swedish Pirates Party and the potential impact of Dutch right-wingers of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party; the chances of Jose Manuel Barroso’s second term as president of the European commission; and other issues that will appear on the European agenda in the coming months, such as the new Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

This program was recorded on Tuesday 9th of June 2009 in the Berlaymont studio of the European Commission in Brussels. The studio was made available to EUX.TV on the condition that the “European Union” would be the topic of the program.

Video recorded on May 27, 2009.

In the runup to last weekend’s European elections, Jiri Paroubek, leader of the social-democrat opposition party in the Czech Republic, was repeatedly bombarded with hundreds of eggs during his election campaign.

The egg-throwing was said to be part of an orchestrated campaign by the governing ODS party, run by former prime minister Mirek Topolanek.

According to preliminary results, ODS won nine seats and the social-democrats CSSD seven.

EUX.TV managed to exclusively film the taking-down of the controversial Entropa artwork in the atrium of the European Council before security guards ask our reporter to stop filming.

Less than one week after a new Czech Prime Minister took office and with nearly two months to go in the Czech presidency, the controversial “Entropa” art work by Czech artist David Czerny has been removed from the walls of the giant atrium at the European Union’s Council building in Brussels.

A statement from the Czech EU Presidency said the removal is “the outcome of the agreement between… Czerny and the government of the Czech Republic.”

According to the Czech engineers taking down Entropa, it will be moved to the Dox museum in Prague.