In January 2013 I stumbled upon Polish MEPs employing a lot of assistants. One employed 19 people, and two employed 17 each back then. The blog entry about that is here, and it was even covered by Polish newspaper Gazeta
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Category: EU Politics
The term “economic Schengen” needs to be banished before it gains any traction
Henrik Enderlein and Jean Pisani-Ferry started to talk of an “economic Schengen” in the autumn of 2014, and Enderlein and Germany’s economy minister Gabriel were at it again today at a conference in the BMWi in Berlin. This is a
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Jack Straw and Brussels lobbying – what he changed, and how, and who he met
Relating to the Jack Straw lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian sugar firms (background here), a few quick remarks. First, we know from this, that: I got into see the relevant director general and his officials in Brussels … and we
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The vexed issue of politicians on Twitter – is it really them?
I’ve never met European Commission for Trade Cecilia Malmström in person. But from tweets exchanged over the years with @MalmstromEU I have some picture of what Malmström must be like as a person. From serious discussions about the implementation of
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Repeat after me: EU myth rebuttal does not work
New year. Same old UK-EU comms. Two tweets from today: https://x.com/RCorbettMEP/status/552435715716296704 https://x.com/britinfluence/status/552404278145331200 Why, oh why, do British pro-EU folks keep on doing this? If you fight a battle using the frames and the words of your opponents, you lose. George
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Big on the big things, small on the small things – Brussels bullshit meaning ‘deregulation’
Back in 2013, José Manuel Barroso in his State of the European Union speech stated that the “EU needs to be big on big things and smaller on smaller things” (speech text here – phrase 3/4 of the way through).
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As a whole the EU is not a source of frustration, but its politicians or policies might be
A tweet by Gergely Polner, sometime comms guy for the European Parliament in London, and now working in the private sector, tweeted this earlier today that caught my eye: https://x.com/eurocrat/status/542952340358459392 What does this actually mean? (and indeed the quote Gergely
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Apple building barriers in the EU Single Market
Back in October 2011, when I still lived in London, I bought two pieces of software for my Macs in the Mac App Store – BBEdit, then priced at £34.99, and Pixelmator, then priced at £20.99*. Those apps have been
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European Disputes – live stream
This morning I am a speaker at European Disputes, part of the Internationales Literaturfestival. My panel, with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Ulrike Guérot, György Dalos, Hubert Védrine and moderated by Wolfgang Herles will be live streamed below, 1015-1145. The full programme is here.
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7th November, Berlin – Dany Cohn-Bendit, Ulrike Guérot at European Disputes
On Friday 7th November I am a panellist at a conference entitled “European Disputes” that is part of the Internationales Literaturfestival in Berlin. I’m on a panel with both Dany Cohn-Bendit and Ulrike Guérot – that’s quite a privilege! Ulrike
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Digitale Gesellschaft: Online Campaigning in Brussels: the next five years
I gave a presentation at Digitale Gesellschaft’s Netzpolitischer Abend on 7th October, entitled Online Campaigning in Brussels: the next five years
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Malmström, TTIP, ISDS and disappearing tweets
This tweet by @BenC42, at 2110 this evening, alerted me to a potentially interesting development in the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP): https://x.com/BenC42/status/515579165069033472 This pointed me to a press release from the S&D Group in the
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