Brendan Donnelly: "Britain in the EU: Learning Through Suffering"

11 November 2014
Brendan Donnelly, former Member of the European Parliament and Director of the Federal Trust, will join UCL's European Society to speak about Britain's renegotiation campaign and the prospects of its EU membership in a talk entitled "Britain in the EU: Learning Through Suffering".

UCL's European Society will host Brendan Donnelly, former Member of the European Parliament and Director of the Federal Trust. Mr. Donnelly will speak about Britain's renegotiation campaign and the prospects of its EU membership in a talk entitled "Britain in the EU: Learning Through Suffering".

Brendan Patrick Donnelly (London, 1950) is a pro-European Union British politician with an exceptional knowledge of the workings of EU institutions. He was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in Sussex South and Crawley at the European Parliament elections of 1994 for the Conservative Party. He then left the party, continued as an independent for a period, and then co-founded and became deputy leader of the Pro-Euro Conservative Party at the 1999 European elections. He subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats. He stood in the 2009 European elections under the Yes2Europe political label. He stood in the 2014 European elections for the 4 Freedoms Party (UK EPP).

Donnelly serves currently as Director of the Federal Trust, a research institute studying the interactions between regional, national, European and global levels of government. Founded in 1945 on the initiative of Sir William Beveridge, it has long made a powerful contribution to the study of federalism and federal systems, always with a particular interest in the European Union and Britain's place in it. Until the 6th of March 2010, Brendan was chair of Federal Union (a Pro-European British group launched in November 1938, to advocate a Federal Union of Europe as a post-war aim).