Someone jumps the queue at a crowded Eurostar terminal at Gare du Midi. A driver does not indicate and almost knocks me off my bike when he turns unexpectedly. Someone parks a car on a zebra crossing meaning it’s impossible for pedestrians to cross. A passenger barges into a carriage […]
Gender framing has reared up in the German general election campaign as reported by The Local. Berlin Candidate for the Christian Democrats Vera Lengsfeld has put up pictures of herself and Angela Merkel both boasting considerable cleavages with the slogan “Wir haben mehr zu bieten” – “We have more to […]
Following on from my post about Bildt and Fischer, today is the time to look at two other strong candidates for top jobs in the EU, this time both of them Brits – Chris Patten and Tony Blair. I’m prompted to write this post after the FT carried a story […]
If the second referendum in Ireland on the Treaty of Lisbon this autumn goes yes then the EU is going to have a new foreign policy chief from 2010. The Treaty of Lisbon creates the position of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, aka EU […]
If you don’t like a politician what do you do with him or her? International organisations are always an option. Could this work for Labour and Gordon Brown? Let me explain. Brussels is full of national politicians who no longer had a role in their national capitals; Neil Kinnock was […]
OK, here we go again. Open Europe having a further whine at something going on in Brussels, this time the amount of money the European Union spends on ‘propaganda’. Also not a surprise is the choice of EUObserver to carry a column from Open Europe’s Lorraine Mullally, and in Sweden […]
European Citizen has an interesting and thoughful post about why Guy Verhofstadt’s statement that “The three largest groups in the European Parliament announced today their commitment to pro-European values” is essentially the wrong approach. European Citizen’s critique is not too far away from my own analysis of the travails of […]
I’ve had a few interesting experiences with what I would call the media establishment over the last few weeks, notably when asked to present the atheist bus campaign at Medienforum.NRW in Köln and at the European Communication Summit in Brussels. Köln was a panel discussion in German, while Bruxelles was […]
There has been a bit of debate on Twitter this morning between @eurosocialiste and @boriswandoren about the ongoing behaviour of politicians in the European Parliament, specifically with regard to the behaviour of the socialists who have caved in and agreed with the EPP to carve up the positions in the […]
There were a few messages on Twitter and a lengthy post from ResEuropa about the prospect of Baroness Shriti Vadera being appointed as the British member of the European Commission this autumn. The story stems from this article in The Times. Firstly, let me set the record straight from the […]
Change or die is the message to the PES from Poul Nyrup Rasmussen on Labourlist today, and he has this to say about the EP: We now face the least progressive European Parliament in its history, with a far more eurosceptic and nationalist right-wing than ever before. Moreover, we also […]
It’s been another silly day of do-they, don’t-they with regard to the composition of the political groups in the European Parliament. The ECRG lost one MEP (Takkula, Finland) and gained one (Tomaszewski, Lithuania). Meanwhile on the other side of the political spectrum the Socialist Group has put its new name […]
