I’ve always had a degree of respect for Louis Michel, sometime foreign minister during Belgium’s 2001 EU Presidency. He seems a jovial and reasonably intelligent chap and, since 2004 as European Commissioner responsible for the development portfolio, has done a decent job – better than his predecessor Poul Nielson at […]
EU justice ministers have agreed that holocaust denial should be a criminal offence throughout all 27 Member States, punishable with a sentence of between 1 and 3 years, with some caveats (summary here). It’s worth underlining that this will almost certainly have been agreed under Pillar III – Police & […]
17th September 2006. Not a vital day in UK politics, but crucial for Sweden. It was the day of the Swedish general election when the Social Democrats lost control of the Riksdagen after 12 years in power. I was at Norra Latin in Stockholm for the election ‘party’ of the […]
The Party of European Socialists has been highlighting childcare issues over the last week, encouraging its member parties and PES Activists to get together, discuss the issue, and highlight where there are problems. They have also published some interesting research about the matter, looking at how the availability of childcare […]
This blog is syndicated at the JEF-related online magazine Taurillon, and from time to time some interesting articles appear there. Today I happened to come across Paolo Vacca’s appeal for a Core Europe. For anyone who has ever been to a JEF or UEF event, such an appeal from Paolo […]
The UK press has been up in arms with reports that Gordon Brown has ‘backed down’ and the Tories are having a rant about the rebate bombshell. The whole thing makes really sickening reading. See The Guardian and BBC. A bunch of nationalistic and mis-informed Tory bloggers have been having […]
I’ve had a go at Poland’s approach to the EU here previously and – as before – it cannot be defended. The dual majority system for Council voting, as proposed by the European Constitution, is the way to go to streamline decision making. However, thanks to some very geeky calculations, […]
I was asked for some information about the UK’s European Communities referendum in 1975 and hence turned to the Wikipedia page about it. The page is really detailed and gives an excellent overview of the referendum, but it also features a fab picture of Margaret Thatcher wearing a sweater with […]
Poland is really making a reputation for itself in EU circles at the moment – not for the right reasons. They are again forcing their idea that voting weights in Council should be proportional to the square root of a country’s population, not directly proportional to population – as proposed […]
She has risen fast in German politics, Ursula von der Leyen. A CDU member since 1990, she has been family and health minister in Angela Merkel’s government since 2005, and now is taking her family politics to the EU level with calls to make EU policies more family friendly – […]
So the EU is 50. It has its Berlin declaration. Plus it there’s already plenty of wrangling over what the phrase in the Declaration “We are united in our aim of placing the EU on a renewed common basis before the European Parliament elections in 2009” actually means. According to Mark Mardell on […]
The EU has always managed to keep a sense of perspective thanks to it history. The European Coal and Steel Community, and the Treaty of Rome that marked the founding of the EEC – 50 years ago tomorrow – were based on the need to ensure European countries never again […]
