A friend messaged me yesterday, asking if I had seen the job ad for Rector of the College of Europe (Mogherini has resigned as Rector since I last wrote about this topic). And my friend sent me the link to the job ad on X. “What is the College of...
EU Politics
Transatlantic geopolitical battles came to a head this past week, as the European Commission finally fined X €120 million under the Digital Services Act. Musk’s response: to demand the EU be abolished (a stance backed by ex-Russian President Medvedev, also on X). At least Radek Sikorski had a decent response...
Back in 2003-04 I was a Masters student in the politics department at the College of Europe. Respect for procedure and for the Rule of Law, and the European Union as a community of law, were common themes throughout the year. And those are principles I have done my best...
Once a year I am invited to run a workshop at the University of Maastricht about online communication in European Union politics. This time, as always, the students were bright, motivated and funny and it’s interesting working with them. But one student – in a group exercise investigating the ethics...
Back in October 2023, when Bluesky was a fledgling invite-only network, I set up the account @vonderleyen.bsky.social for a few reasons (and I wrote about the experiment then). First, it seemed like a reasonable bet that Bluesky would grow into viable Twitter alternative for EU politics. Second, it was better...
In some management training course years ago I was given the book Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? by Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones. You can find a summary of it from Harvard Business Review here. Leaders, Goffee and Jones say, need vision, energy, authority, and strategic direction. And one...
Back in the autumn of last year, in a train in Freilassing, a German police officer came through the carriage and asked for everyone’s passport. “Why are you checking all the passengers on this train?” I asked him, in German. “Because we check everyone at this border” “Sorry you don’t....
When Twitter pulled out of the EU’s voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton of course took to Twitter to respond: Twitter leaves EU voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation. But obligations remain. You can run but you can’t hide. Beyond voluntary commitments,...
Within a couple of days of each other The Economist and the FT have written pieces about how tensions in the governing coalition in Berlin are having an impact on EU policymaking. The central topic is Germany’s decision to oppose the phase out of internal combustion engine powered cars at...
Looking back it was a pretty good dozen years in many ways. From when I started using Twitter for EU political purposes early in 2009 until it all started to go wrong throughout 2022 I managed to achieve a hell of a lot on that platform. But it was based...
I’ve realised that now I am no longer using Twitter, there is no systematic overview of all the flow diagrams I have made over the years. So this is a post looking back over all the things I have diagrammed, and why! Please click on any image below to load...
For years I have made pretty much every long distance trip I can by train. Conference in Iași? Sure, train via Ukraine to get there. Teaching in Geneva? Night train back to Berlin. Holiday in the Balkans? I’m the one who will take the Bar-Belgrade train. But what can I...