There’s been plenty of talk, and now we are ready to go with a number of events from the Labour Movement for Europe this autumn. The main series of events is entitled EUROPA-Soirée – a get together each month in
Continue reading
Category: EU Politics
Techo-Commissioner
Wow! He’s the European Commissioner responsible for Research, so you would hope he would be quite high tech, but Janez PotoÄ?nik has launched a new website with animations, an audio message greeting you, and a gaudy yellow background too. So
Continue reading
Alla ska med – Swedish election campaigning
20 days to go until the Swedish election, the campaigns are in full swing. So what should be made of all of all of this? And might the Social Democrats manage to hold on to power in the face of
Continue reading
Oneseat.eu – target is close, so SIGN!
The online petition calling for one seat for the European Parliament – oneseat.eu – has now passed 900000 signatures. It’s an excellent initiative to call for the ending of the wasteful monthly trips of the European Parliament to Strasbourg. Anyone
Continue reading
Toynbee on Sweden – bit wide of the mark
Polly Toynbee has written a column in The Guardian today about Sweden, this time analysing the threat of Fredrik Reinfeldt to Persson’s government in the forthcoming elections. Toynbee often raves about the good things in Swedish society, and has generally
Continue reading
Social Europe – what is it?
I’ve been trying to work out what my answer to that question should be for some months now, and attending the United Seminar of JEF in Norway [my blog entry, pics from JEF-Sweden’s blog] a few weeks ago helped me
Continue reading
French politics takes a coarse turn
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
Continue reading
Small technical changes
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
Continue reading
Denmark the Number 1 place to live, presumably only if you’re Danish
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
Continue reading
Feeling sorry for the European Commission
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
Continue reading
How euro-party-political are you?
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
Continue reading
The Sego-Merkel-Brown axis?
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
Continue reading