{"id":435894,"date":"2025-09-19T11:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/435894\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T11:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:02:10","slug":"guy-verhofstadt-to-speak-at-pro-eu-dinner-in-edinburgh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/435894\/","title":{"rendered":"Guy Verhofstadt to speak at pro-EU dinner in Edinburgh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  One of the most influential European political leaders of recent decades, Verhofstadt will be the keynote speaker at the annual dinner of the European Movement in Scotland on November 1.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Remarking on his forthcoming visit, Guy Verhofstadt hailed \u201cinternationalist\u201d Scotland.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cScotland is the most pro-EU part of the UK. Its people understand the value to its trade, security, education, sport and culture of being at the heart of European affairs,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  <strong>READ MORE:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenational.scot\/news\/25479678.police-scotland-backs-ash-regans-bill-criminalise-buying-sex\/?ref=ed_recent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Police Scotland backs Ash Regan&#8217;s bill to criminalise buying sex<\/strong><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cThey are not isolationists but internationalists. They are not fantasists, but realists. They are not afraid of deep democratic cooperation between states but see the clear <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenational.scot\/news\/25063718.dwp-news-interviews-updates\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">benefits<\/a> of it. I look forward to being in Edinburgh and I\u2019m delighted that the European Movement in Scotland has invited me to visit a truly great European capital city.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Guy Verhofstadt was prime minister of Belgium between 1999 and 2008, then served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), retiring in 2024.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  His many senior roles at the European Parliament included being Brexit coordinator and, for four years, chair of the Brexit Steering Group following the UK\u2019s 2016 EU referendum.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  He is president of the European Movement International.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most influential European political leaders of recent decades, Verhofstadt will be the keynote speaker at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-435894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}