History
The 2004 European Parliament elections were reported as a good result for Eurosceptic parties. 37 MEPs (33 on July 20, with four more the next day) from the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Junibevægelsen (Denmark), Mouvement pour la France (France), Lega Nord (Italy), ChristenUnie-SGP (Netherlands), LAOS (Greece), Junilistan (Sweden), Nezávislí (Czech Republic), the League of Polish Families (Poland) and an Independent from Ireland, joined together in the first week of the new Parliament to form the Eurosceptic group called "Independence/Democracy", succeeding the group called "Europe of Democracies and Diversities" that had existed before the elections.
In the first week, IND/DEM assigned a UKIP MEP to the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality. The MEP, Godfrey Bloom, promptly made comments including "No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age" and "I am here to represent Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home. I am going to promote men's rights." The remarks engendered outrage from a range of fellow politicians.
One UKIP MEP never made it to IND/DEM. MEP Ashley Mote was expelled from UKIP prior to IND/DEM's formation when it became known that he faced charges for housing benefit fraud. Mote went on to join the far-right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group before being convicted in 2007.
The Lega Nord MEPs eventually all left the group after their expulsion from IND/DEM following an incident involving a t-shirt and the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. MEPs from the League of Polish Families also left the group, although not all and not all at once.
After having been suspended from UKIP following his arrest on fraud allegations, MEP Tom Wise left IND/DEM in June 2008.
By 24 June 2008, IND/DEM had 22 MEPs.
After the 2009 European Parliament elections, 18 IND/DEM MEPs from four Member States were elected for the 2009-2014 term (the Seventh European Parliament). The great majority of these seats (thirteen) were from the United Kingdom Independence Party, with others being two from the ChristianUnion – Reformed Political Party of the Netherlands, two from the Popular Orthodox Rally of Greece, and one from Libertas France. But that didn't meet the threshold laid down in the European Parliament's Rules of Procedure. So when the Seventh European Parliament started on 14 July 2009, IND/DEM would not qualify as a group.
On 30 June 2009, it was reported the remnants of IND/DEM were to unite with the remnants of another collapsing group, Union for a Europe of Nations (UEN), to create a new group whose official name was not yet determined.
On 1 July 2009 a press conference was held launching the new group. That press conference named the new group Europe of Freedom and Democracy. IND/DEM had ceased to exist.
Read more about this topic: Independence/Democracy
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