Just a quick plug for the ‘Who’s Your Candidate?’ campaign 2009 being run by the Danish pro-EU / centre-left organisation Nyt Europa. While the changes to how the European Commission President is elected in the Reform Treaty are rather cosmetic, it’s nevertheless right to push MEPs and European Political Parties […]
I’ve been meaning to write a post about the Reform Treaty and the Common Agricultural Policy for a while, but Richard Corbett MEP has beaten me to it. Richard has also written more on the Compass website. However I think it is worth looking at the issue of the Common […]
What do you do when an Uzbek businessman with a questionable background (Alisher Usmanov) wants to take over a UK football club (Arsenal)? Well, as a start you put together an opposition alliance comprising a dissident former British Ambassador to Tashkent, a few hundred bloggers, and a UKIP MEP in […]
Friends of the Earth Europe have released a cartoon animation about how Exxon Mobil continues to fund climate change deniers, and how its advertising campaign is misleading regarding it’s environmental behaviour. As well as the concern about climate change there’s another issue below the surface that is alluded to in […]
It seems to be increasingly rare that I turn up to debates and lectures these days and emerge saying to myself that I really hard learned something new and interesting. Perhaps the circles in which I work are too narrow. Yet this week I’ve been privileged to hear two excellent […]
It’s election campaign time in Poland this month. Donald Tusk, leader of the main opposition party, has been campaigning in London; the estimated 1 million Poles living in the UK is undoubtedly fertile ground for support for his party. Yet on my travels this weekend to Belgium the sheer scale […]
Ever since the negotiations started before the summer I’ve been no fan of the UK’s position regarding the EU Reform Treaty, with the government trying to argue that the Treaty is different from the European Constitution hence meaning no referendum is needed on the text. I’ve posted about the argument […]
“The European Parliament is trying to decide how numbers of MEPs will be allocated between different Member States in the future. The Severin-Lamassoure idea is there should be 750 MEPs, with 6 per Member State, and a maximum of 96 for the largest country. Seats for the countries in between […]
The Finns are not always known for their humour, but JEF-Finland has managed to make a funny set of movies busting the myths about the EU. They are posted on the Kurkkudirektiivi (trans: Cucumber Directives) website. Apparently the Finns put some sort of tar(?) in their food, and the EU […]
It sounds like a nice line to take – the EU should stop its institutional navel gazing and get on with delivering results, looking outwards to deal with the threats in the world. Those were the words of David Miliband in his speech to the Labour Party Conference this week, […]
So you think you know about the EU? Well, test it out thanks to Facebook. I’ve created a test in the Facebook application ‘Traveller IQ’ that tests if you know where cities that have been important in the history of the EU are actually located. Schengen anyone? Some of the […]
I was relieved to see that 2 of the 4 charges under the Representation of the People Act 1983 against my good friend Miranda Grell have been dropped today. The case has been adjourned, and the final verdict will be delivered after closing statements on Friday next week (21st September). […]
