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 really bad idea for four reasons, each of which I […]
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 got the sugar regulations changed We also know the meeting […]
Summary I wanted to buy a computer monitor, and rather than ordering from Amazon, I chose a smaller firm instead – Compuland, based in Wilhelmshaven. The order was a story of woe, and awful and ridiculous service – and they sent me an empty box. There is no way I […]
This morning I closed my Gmail account. For good. This caused some interesting reactions among my friends (notably Andras), so this blog entry is an effort to explain why I have taken this step, and why I am adjusting my online and purchasing behaviour in some ways. I need to […]
[UPDATE: I have now a year of experience using the Roomba 650 – pretty much all I write in this review hold, but I now have a few more observations that you can read here.] I make a lot of business trips, and I am tired of returning home to […]
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 Schengen (her previous Commission post was Home Affairs), via deleted […]
New year. Same old UK-EU comms. Two tweets from today: A new year brings new opportunities to debunk EU myths. Here is: things euroscpetics don't want you to know #1! pic.twitter.com/WtGnQx26pe — Richard Corbett (@RichardGCorbett) January 6, 2015 .@damiangreenmp argues that pro-Europeans must 'dispel the myth, fostered by the Better […]
“Party strategists must be scratching their heads […] after the latest debacle” writes David Shariatmadari in The Guardian, examining the story of the British Conservative Party using a Photoshopped picture of a road near Weimar, Thüringen, Germany to illustrate their latest election poster. Shariatmadari’s piece goes on to list the […]
I’ve long been fascinated by the German politics, and how German politics is perceived beyond Germany. One aspect of this is how Merkel is described as the strong leader, internationally – a picture that is generally not reflected within Germany itself. For all their fascinating insight, pieces like the long […]
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). Since then this phrase has become some sort of mantra […]
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: "One has to acknowledge that EU has been a source of frustration even for those most favourably disposed towards it" http://t.co/7OwqPCbPdw […]
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 upgrading happily enough through the App Store system until today. […]
