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
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Category: EU Politics
Musk wants to abolish the EU, while European Commissioners keep posting on X
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
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On Federica Mogherini, and the third scandal in six years to rock the College of Europe
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
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Using the internet without agency
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
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Ursula von der Leyen – now officially on Bluesky (and some lessons so you can trust what you read on that network)
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
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European Commission, why should anyone be led by you? You’re not really leaders if you’re still on Twitter/X
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
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Germany’s complete disregard of Schengen – ethically wrong, and practically unworkable
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.
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How Twitter’s role as pre-eminent social media in EU politics ends
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: https://x.com/ThierryBreton/status/1662194595755704321 Breton has a presence on open source, decentralised rival Mastodon –
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German coalition squabbles reach Brussels – but it’s Scholz who’s deficient here, not really the Greens or the FDP
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
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In EU politics we treated Twitter as a social network, not as digital public infrastructure – and built it all on a platform we do not control
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
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Turning any complicated process into a flow diagram
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,
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Trains for Europe project now live
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
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