Barroso Bullshit Bingo had alliteration as good as José Manuel’s buzzwords. #JunckerBullshitBingo might not have quite the same ring to it, but with our beloved Commission President getting ready to make his first “State of the European Union” speech on 9th September, we in the EU blog and Twittersphere are...
Back on 30th June I was subjected to a non-Schengen compliant border control at Buchs in Switzerland. The full report from the border, including a transcript, can be found here. The essence of the message given by the police officer checking me was that as he was from the cantonal...
Humour about the EU is hard enough – how do you make the European Union funny without just falling back on crass national stereotypes? And then to try to do that in German, bearing in mind that – well – the stereotype is that Germany is not the funniest place...
Dear Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Matteo Renzi and Mariano Rajoy, dear Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Alex Stubb and Wolfgang Schäuble, dear Jean Claude Juncker, Martin Schulz and Donald Tusk, You might not sleep much tonight if the summit drags on. But sometime you will go to bed, wake up in the morning,...
Maybe it is not my place to say anything about Greece. I am not an economist, and I am not at the negotiating table. But I am tired of what I am reading – from politicians, journalists and others on blogs and Twitter – and hence I have drawn up...
This afternoon I tried to go into the European Parliament. The EU institution that is supposed to represent people like me – citizens of the European Union. I am not a lobbyist or a journalist or an employee of another EU institution. So I could not get in. I approached...
I gave a speech about EU online communications at Danmarks Medie- og Journalisthøjskole in Aarhus last year, and yesterday John Frølich – one of the professors there – e-mailed me to ask if I could suggest 20 to 30 EU Twitter accounts that his students ought to follow. So rather...
Tomorrow at re:publica, the annual tech and politics gathering in Berlin, Tobias Schwarz (from Fistful of Euros) and I will talk about 12 years of blogging about European Politics and the EU. Fistful has been around a little longer than my own blog; I’ve been writing here since July 2005....
Following my earlier blog entry about Twitter chats I was confronted by a familiar charge – ah, Frans Timmermans is a Facebook guy. He doesn’t like Twitter. That’s the problem. There are probably some pretty good reasons he likes Facebook, and not Twitter, and I will come to those at...
At 1600 CET today, First Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans will do an online chat on Twitter and Facebook* – tag is #AskFrans. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc will do the same on Monday 27th April at 1400 CET – tag there is #ITS2015chat. Oooooh, look, little users...
Dear Alexis, dear Yanis, When Syriza emerged as the largest party at the election on 25th January I smiled. That’s the end of New Democracy and PASOK, a time to turn the page, for Greece to be able to make a new start, I thought. I bet a bunch of...
I am very happy to announce two further dates in the #EUTweetup series. For the next two tweetups we have some special guests! On Thursday 23rd April, from 1600, in Brussels at Wild Geese (new location – Metro Maalbeek (map)) we will be joined by Jason L Knoll – follow...