The original blog: commentary about everything except transport
“There are two main motivations for national leaders when nominating candidates for high positions in international organisations. Either send away a politician who could be a domestic opponent – for example Nicolas Sarkozy nominating Dominique Strauss-Kahn for the IMF –
Continue reading
Better than no-one – S&D group MEP Claude Moraes has issued a statement, on behalf of the group, defending Schengen and criticising Sarkozy and Berlusconi. Moraes – rightly – says: The Sarkozy-Berlusconi demand for stricter border checks is ironic. It
Continue reading
So started an interesting exchange of views about the future of Schengen yesterday – my tweet, and then a reply from European Commisson spokesperson Koen Doens: http://twitter.com/jonworth/status/64751179715969024 @jonworth Disagree. Intelligent Cion w/ courage to c that governance may possibly have
Continue reading
After appearing on BBC World Service World Have Your Say to discuss the True Finns, I’ve now written a piece for Comment is Free about the same issue – you can read it here. The comments thread is full of
Continue reading
Tim Montgomerie has written an astounding piece at Conservative Home, entitled “We need to address the abusive relationship rather than just stop the latest punch from Brussels”. For Tim, like many Tory bloggers, any notion of accurate reporting goes out
Continue reading
“The reactions to the election gains of Timo Soini’s True Finns (Perussuomalaiset) in Sunday’s general election in Finland have been full of earthquake metaphors. “A tremor hit the EU” is the way the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt describes it. If that
Continue reading
Something has been nagging at me since the True Finns’ election success on Sunday. I think it’s because I am struggling to answer this question: why must True Finns be brought into a governing coalition? This question was brought into
Continue reading
Thursday 12th April and Dr. Silvana Koch-Mehrin MEP runs an event in the European Parliament entitled “The New Rules of Openness”, together with LibertyGlobal. The poster advertising the event is shown above. The very same day the Vroni-Plag Wiki released
Continue reading
The Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament yesterday backed Andrew Duff‘s report (PDF here) that proposes reforms to the way MEPs are elected. Most controversial is the proposal to create a Europe-wide list of 25 MEPs, essentially a transnational
Continue reading
I’m not in a position to judge the quality of their music, or indeed the quality of any music in the Eurovision Song Contest to be quite honest. But facing a series of political, democratic and economic difficulties succinctly outlined
Continue reading
I was on the BBC World Service programme “World Have Your Say” (programme site, blog) earlier to talk about the implications of the election success of Timo Soini’s True Finns party in yesterday’s parliamentary election. The discussion briefly examined the
Continue reading
Well, not quite, but figuratively speaking… Bear with me. The gentleman pictured is Gus Murray (on Twitter here), an Australian currently resident in Denmark. He’s a graduate of Copenhagen Business School, and has been involved in numerous startup businesses and
Continue reading