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 […]
It’s two years since the 2019 European Election, marking the start of this 9th term of the European Parliament. And for a while I have had this nagging feeling that something is not right about the Parliament in this term. So I will have a go at addressing this problem […]
Back in 2013 when we naively thought social media could be a force for political good, Andy Carvin wrote a book called Distant Witness, which was about his experiences covering and understanding political upheaval from the other side of the world, and using social media (especially Twitter) to do so. The […]
⚠️ WARNING! Political communication is my area of expertise, NOT public health. This blog post is no recommendation as to what ought to happen from a health perspective! ⚠️ ? This piece was written on 25.1.2021, i.e. before the decision for a Conditional Marketing Authorisation has been approved or not […]
I might have been happily blogging away here for the last fifteen years, and in the meantime racking up enough words to publish a few books, but I have never had the confidence or the sticking power to actually write a book myself. Now at least I have managed the […]