Over the years I’ve continually argued that the European Union needs to improve its representative democracy – it needs to develop federal institutions, and give citizens a genuine voice at elections. Yet while, in essence, I still believe in that, I nevertheless have to admit that representative democracy is struggling […]
At the start of last week I was a guest lecturer at Roskilde University, presenting about blogging and the EU. You can find the slides I used on Slideshare here. In the discussion following the presentation I was posed a question by Angela Bourne, one of the academics that had […]
There have been two lines of attack from UK EU-phobes to the news that the EU has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One has been to point to the current economic travails of the EU, and the political strife that has caused, and to criticise the award as a […]
The EU has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But who should collect it? Have a go at the quick poll below, and if you have other suggestions leave them in the comments!
The Foreign Minister of the EU’s 6th largest country (Radek Sikorski, Poland) arrives in the UK and gives a speech on 21st September lambasting Britain’s policy towards the European Union and the reaction is… almost non-existent. Isn’t that a bit odd? Let me explain a little more. At the time I read […]
I was one of the people interviewed for Javier Ruiz Soler‘s European Studies Masters Thesis “Who blogs what? A qualitative study on the role of the Euroblogosphere in a context of a European Public Sphere.” The PDF of the thesis is here (Javier has given the interviewed bloggers permission to […]
I have been repeatedly criticised on Twitter this morning by @PaulMBrady65 for saying I am a federalist, but refusing to vote for a federalist party in European elections. Here is a quick explanation why (I can’t easily get the nuance into 140 character tweets). As a starting point, my commitment […]
It creeps up on you with alarming regularity… is it really a year ago that we last played every EU nerd’s party game, Barroso Bullshit Bingo? Anyway in just 2 days – on Wednesday at 0900 CET – our beloved President of the European Commission (who has discovered both a […]
Steve Bell’s Guardian cartoon has William Hague in the barrel of a tank’s cannon approaching the Embassy of Ecuador in London – reference to the robust wording of the British Embassy in Quito’s letter to the Ecuador government (excerpt here). The threat is that unless Ecuador hands over Julian Assange, […]
The European Parliament has introduced some new and essentially sensible rules, asking MEPs to declare their financial interests and business dealings prior to their time as MEPs. This is important, as the what a MEP did prior to being elected can impact on their job after election. Work for a […]
Back at the end of the 1990s one of the supposed strengths of the Britain in Europe campaign was that it brought together leaders of both industry and politics to create a broad coalition that would have eventually campaigned for the UK to join the Euro, if the vote had […]
Another day, another European Commission web communications mess. Today it’s “Science: It’s A Girl Thing” and this video. The website for the initiative is here, and reactions that range from The New Statesman to the very rude tweets. This is just three months after the Commission had to pull a […]
