Press release in support from Nigel Farage (UKIP MEP)

Pursuing Justice For British Home-Owners In Spain


In recent years, Spanish provincial governance has employed a number of instruments for depriving tens of thousands of home-owners, in new developments, either of their properties, in their entirety, or of the amenities, such as access-roads and water- and electricity-supplies, to which they were legally entitled.

One such instrument was a requirement for "retrospective planning-permission", whereby planning-permissions, which had already been granted, and on the basis of which properties had been built, could be, and frequently were, retrospectively withdrawn.

Legal challenges to such instruments characteristically foundered in a welter of official obstruction, which it would not be extravagant to call corrupt; and an outcry consequently arose, from Spain, which eventually reached the Petitions-Committee of the European Union's consultative assembly, in Brussels, and gave rise there to a report, by Margrete Auken (2008/2248(INI)) condemning the actions of the Spanish authorities and calling for the budget of the European Union to be suspended, until suitable redress was made.

Many thousands of those dispossessed or disadvantaged in this way were Britons, who were tempted to invest, and live, in Spanish properties, on the understanding that to do so would be safe enough, because Spain was a "member-state" of the European Union.

Accordingly, the UK Independence Party supported the adoption of the "Auken Report" and deplores the assembly's inaction - with regard to bringing pressure to bear on Spain by suspending the European Union's budget - which has nevertheless followed.

Moreover, since the British Government, as an EU-member government, seems to be unwilling to intervene, or to be incapable of intervening, to protect its nationals abroad, despite its assurances that they would be as secure in another "member-state" of the EU, as in their own; and in view of the erroneous nature of the assumption that diplomatic relations, between the EU's "member-states", would be more, and not less, effective, than diplomatic relations generally, for providing the necessary safeguards, the UK Independence Party is determined to press the members of the EU's consultative assembly to use what power they have, in the way they promised to use it, when they adopted the "Auken Report".