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
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Category: EU Politics
Cold Turkey? No, but cooler tempers would help
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
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Good old Eddie – explaining the EU
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
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Back in a position of power and influence. Well, not really!
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.
Continue readingThree cheers for Balkenende
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
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Café Babel on EU blogs
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
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Marty & The CoE Report – a more considered analysis
The Council of Europe report into the rendition flights across Europe was released on Tuesday this week. The press across Europe was filled with details of the claims that were made by author of the report, Dick Marty, that Europe
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Do eu blog? TNF article
At last – some work for the Young European Federalists (JEF-Europe) that does not entail updating their website! I wrote an article entitled ‘Do EU blog?‘ for the latest edition of The New Federalist, the JEF magazine. The article is
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Where do they get these ideas from? EDF
The joys of EU energy market liberalisation. EDF, the French mostly state owned energy firm, bought London Energy a few years ago – the firm is the main electricity company for most of London. Personally I don’t have any problem
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The less loony Euro-Tories fight back
I wrote a little while ago about the efforts of the Bruges Group to force the Tory MEPs to quit the EPP-ED group in the European Parliament – read that detailed post here. I am quite amused today to discover
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Respecting the Eurozone rules, and 2.67% GDP growth – Cyberbudget
The French finance ministry has not been having a fun time recently – exceeding the 3% of GDP deficit limit imposed by the stability and growth pact for the Eurozone. So what’s the solution? Well, in part it seems, it
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Eurosceptics’ Plan D campaign – too good
It makes me most concerned to have to write something positive about eurosceptics here, but give credit where it’s due: the Independence-Democracy group in the European Parliament, containing luminaries [sic] such as Jens Peter Bonde and Nigel Farage are sending
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