The EU: providing us with yet another reason why it should not exist

According to Reuters

The European Union agreed on Monday to inform groups and people why they are put on its list of terrorist organisations, a move aimed at avoiding decisions being overturned in court...

EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday agreed that reasons for blacklisting 29 other groups and more than 30 individuals remained valid.

"Therefore the Council intends to maintain (them) on the list," a statement said.

"The persons, groups and entities concerned will be informed via a statement of reason of the specific information that form the basis of the Council's decision," it said, adding groups would be allowed to comment on the decisions.

That seems like a jolly good idea: let's tell a load of terrorists why we think they're terrorists. That way, we can let them know what we have on them and, more to the point, what we don't have on them. Well Done.

The EU blacklist includes the Palestinian Hamas group, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Blacklisting means groups are banned and have their assets frozen.

Hold on a minute...I know that the rest of the world had caught on to the fact that Hamas is a terrorist group, but the EU decided that funding the Palastinian Authority i.e Hamas was a jolly sensible thing to do. Am all confused, now. Perhaps they are?

Either way, it should be up to the democratically elected and accountable politicians of this country to decide on where aid goes, and which groups are considered terrorists. I was going to tell this to a group of Iranians outside the FCO the other day, and inform them that they needed to stand outside some EU institution, but I couldn't be bothered and I had a meeting to make.

I suspect even if I had told them, they wouldn't have believed me. I mean, it is rather a joke that the third largest trading nation in the world is ruled by a group of crackpot politicians who wouldn't know a sound economic policy if it landed on their head and bit them. And yet, we are.