French politics has its downsides – the domination of an ENA-educated elite being the principal among them – but la politique àla française has normally managed to avoid the more vulgar approach typified in the UK and especially the USA. Not so for the 2007 Presidential election it seems. […]
I’ve made a few technical changes to the blog over the last 24 hours. Unfortunately the direct links to Polish and Swedish translations have had to be removed – they just do not work reliably any more. The solution is to use the excellent WorldLingo translation tool, but visitors will […]
The BBC has this evening posted this article on its website about a ‘happiness map’ produced by an academic at the University of Leicester. Denmark comes out first, followed by Switzerland. While I have no doubt that for the majority of the populations of Odense or Thur those cities are […]
The European Commission is going to have to face a staff cut – or so it seems after EU Finance Ministers have suggested that 1700 staff that retire between 2007 and 2013 should not be replaced. A good summary can be found at EUObserver here. So what do we make […]
Back at the 2004 European Parliament elections, I worked on a project called VoteMatch with some fellow students at the College of Europe (Bob Aal and Tamara Anthony). I met up with Bob recently in London and he reminded me of the site, so I thought it was worth having […]
I’ve just tried to wake my mind up a bit this Sunday morning by reading this article in The Observer about Ségolène Royal (Wikipedia about her). The picture that emerges from the article is a strange one, an image of a politician who is sharp and competent, but has not […]
Sometimes you have just been out of power too long, and you simply must have it back. That seems to be what has happened in Slovakia where the left-ish SMER party of new Prime Minister Robert Fico has formed a coalition with the right-wing nationalist Slovak Nationalist Party (SNS), and […]
Yesterday evening the Young Fabians organised an event at the Turkish Embassy entitled “Cold Turkey? Is the EU dream dead?” – details of the event here. More than 60 people came along to the immensely grand residence of the Turkish ambassador to London, and heard him give an introduction defending […]
There is one Brit who seems capable of explaining the EU in an amusing and pleasant way – Eddie Izzard. He went to the last European Council meeting with Blair, and has recorded a Podcast about it – hear it here (pic to the right is from pm.gov.uk). He’s also […]
The launch event of the Labour Movement for Europe, London and the South East Region took place on Friday. Peter Skinner MEP spoke on ‘Is Europe A Labour Issue?‘, with Mary Honeyball MEP and David Schoibl from LME also speaking. We had about 18 people at the launch – not […]
No, I’m not losing my mind. Dutch PM Jan-Peter Balkenende might do something good for the EU today or tomorrow: raising the issue of the EP having its seat in Strasbourg at the European Council meeting in Brussels. See this article from EUObserver. Balkenende is far from being my favourite […]
This week’s edition of Café Babel gives an overview of the impact of blogs on EU politics – read the edition here. Interesting for me to read this issue now – I’ve only just completed this article for The New Federalist about the same subject. However, like much of what […]
