I spent an hour this evening at LSE listening to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano [Wikipedia] speak on the topic ‘Is there a future for European Integration?’, part of the LSE European lecture series [details]. The event got off to a bad start: a standing ovation for Napolitano in typical Italian […]
Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen has had a rant that too many senior officials in the European Commission are too powerful, and want to take decisions themselves rather than letting the Commissioners know what’s going on – see this article from EUObserver. Well, for anyone that’s ever had any dealings […]
It is a bright, clear Autumn morning in London. A scattering of brown autumn leaves covered the pathway outside my flat and the air really felt cool when cycling for the first time since spring. Yet the sun over Walworth’s 1960s council estates made the place feel a bit less […]
Elections have just taken place in Sweden and Austria, with very differing fortunes for centre-left parties. In Sweden, a resurgent right managed to win a narrow victory. The ‘Nya Moderaterna’ have a dynamic young leader – sounds a bit like Cameron and the Tories? In Austria, the left fared better, […]
President of the European Parliament Josep Borrell, when talking about the Strasbourg seat of the European Parliament, last week stated that the “historic dimension [of Strasbourg] cannot be perceived in the same way in ‘some Nordic country’ which did not participate in WWII” (news story from EUObserver here). What a […]
Mats Engström has written a good piece at Opendemocracy about the Swedish election result, and highlights some of the tensions that will appear for the Alliance when trying to manage to govern. In the meantime, European Commissioner Margot Wallström has emerged as a front runner to follow Goran Persson as […]
Thanks to this post from DJ Nozem, I’ve come across this amusing press release from DG Agriculture of the European Commission entitled ‘CAP Reform: Commission proposes new banana regime’. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! With all the criticisms always being levelled at the EU about its lack […]
OK, I’ve made a start – I’ve been to my first Swedish class. It was run by a very camp Croat – Casper – who learnt Swedish from peacekeeping troops in the Balkans before moving to Sweden to study… Oh, and the courses are at Westminster University – they seem […]
As has been widely trailed [see EUObserver here], the European Commission is today due to give the go-ahead for the EU membership of Romania and Bulgaria. It’s not all good news though; for Bulgaria there are still areas of concern such as the justice system, the fight against corruption and […]
While Presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy has been in the limelight all summer, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has resurfaced to give a speech about – among other things – EU energy policy [story from EUObserver here]. De Villepin is quoted as saying: The liberalisation of energy markets is not […]
I must admit that I have been astounded by the amount of people that have found this blog thanks to searches for matters relating to the European Commission concours. My original post about the issue has – by 25th September – amassed no fewer than 47 comments! It seems that […]
Everyone criticises it, but how much do we really know about the Common Agricultural Policy? Now there’s no excuse – have a look at farmsubsidy.org, an excellent collaborative website about who gets what, and which countries just refuse to release any data. While CAP is not really my main field […]
