I first wrote about the Silvana Koch-Mehrin plagiarism case on 12th May, the day she chose to resign her positions in the FDP and as Vice President of the European Parliament. Notably she remained a MEP at this stage, saying
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Category: EU Politics
The complicated balance between listening and leading, and how it applies to politics in Europe
Look across Europe, and think of the calibre of its leaders. Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron. Zapatero, Berlusconi, Tusk. Reinfeldt, Løkke, Pahor. Brussels with Barroso and Van Rompuy. This is not a quality lineup, not what one would classically call a statesman
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The EU nerds’ new toy – Vote Watch’s vote match
VoteWatch.eu has been a vital tool in the EU politics watcher’s toolbox for sometime – it allows you to see how individual MEPs vote, how cohesive political groups are, and how often MEPs turn up to vote. The data it
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Lazy Daniel Hannan MEP
I suppose drafting polemics takes time, or perhaps there is another reason for his deficiency. For Daniel Hannan MEP, European poster boy for the Tory right, seems increasingly to be neglecting the very work he is supposed to be doing
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22nd June – a day of web activity for an open and honest European Parliament?
It has not been a good few months for the European Parliament, and today probably tops all of the days for stories that show the EP in a bad light. As Jason O’Mahony points out, the EP lost the Toland
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The FT’s imprecise EU vocabulary
In an otherwise good quality article about former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt’s role in determining the EU institutions response to bailouts by Joshua Chaffin there is nevertheless an issue – the terms the FT uses to explain the EU: Mr
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MEPs should stop complaining that they are anonymous – they are responsible
OK, he’s a MP rather than a MEP now, but a piece by Jonathan Evans for Public Service Europe annoys me. There are some valid points in the piece on the way the EP and Westminster work, but this is
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Danish Marmite ban – not Pia Kjærsgaard’s next populist plan to keep foreigners away
Today’s Guardian has the story that Denmark is to ban Marmite. As the FT’s Stanley Pignal quipped on Twitter, is this the next step (after new customs controls, despite Schengen) from Denmark’s populist Dansk Folkeparti to keep foreigners away by
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How MEPs should organise their web comms and social networking
I was a speaker yesterday at the Nordic-Baltic Youth Forum 2011 in Narva, Estonia. The slides from my presentation are here, but this post is about an issue that was on my mind all day – how Members of the European
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What Cathy Ashton needs to do now
I stand accused of being a negative, complaining blogger. I have not been a fan of Cathy Ashton’s work as the EU’s High Rep, wrote that she should go as early as January, have analysed her current predicament, and have
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Introducing the Cathy Ashton Sentence Generator
German Green MEP Reinhard Bütikofer outlines his concerns about Cathy Ashton this week in Strasbourg, including that she’s a ‘sentence generator’: So it gave me an idea. Now you can have a go as well, thanks to the automated Ashton
Continue reading Silvana first, FDP second… European citizens last
I’m not the biggest fan of German liberal MEP Silvana Koch-Mehrin. She was involved with a spat with bloggers prior to the 2009 European elections and was not open and transparent at that time, and she’s the sort of ultra-professional,
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