Martin Kettle has penned a piece in today’s Guardian entitled “Greece, Schengen, Nato – it’s time to admit the European dream is over“. It’s the latest in a series of pieces that are appearing a lot in the UK press
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The Guardian | The European parliament needs to get its house in order
“You have to understand: you are the enemy.” Those were the words I heard uttered by a researcher in the European parliament to civil servants from the EU’s member states a couple of years ago. What – with aghast looks
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Brussels bubble deflation
“You were the future once.” So said David Cameron to Tony Blair in a notable exchange during the latter’s final years in office. As I sit today drinking a blanche at a pub on Place Luxembourg, Brussels, so the phrase
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The European Parliament is being pro-EU, but not pro-EU democracy
There are two main issues at stake with the so-called ‘Six Pack’ of EU legislation designed to prevent eurozone countries overspending in future. The first is the amount of wriggle room to be given to states that break the rules,
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Silvana Koch-Mehrin: resign now
I first wrote about the Silvana Koch-Mehrin plagiarism case on 12th May, the day she chose to resign her positions in the FDP and as Vice President of the European Parliament. Notably she remained a MEP at this stage, saying
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The complicated balance between listening and leading, and how it applies to politics in Europe
Look across Europe, and think of the calibre of its leaders. Merkel, Sarkozy, Cameron. Zapatero, Berlusconi, Tusk. Reinfeldt, Løkke, Pahor. Brussels with Barroso and Van Rompuy. This is not a quality lineup, not what one would classically call a statesman
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The EU nerds’ new toy – Vote Watch’s vote match
VoteWatch.eu has been a vital tool in the EU politics watcher’s toolbox for sometime – it allows you to see how individual MEPs vote, how cohesive political groups are, and how often MEPs turn up to vote. The data it
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Lazy Daniel Hannan MEP
I suppose drafting polemics takes time, or perhaps there is another reason for his deficiency. For Daniel Hannan MEP, European poster boy for the Tory right, seems increasingly to be neglecting the very work he is supposed to be doing
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22nd June – a day of web activity for an open and honest European Parliament?
It has not been a good few months for the European Parliament, and today probably tops all of the days for stories that show the EP in a bad light. As Jason O’Mahony points out, the EP lost the Toland
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The FT’s imprecise EU vocabulary
In an otherwise good quality article about former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt’s role in determining the EU institutions response to bailouts by Joshua Chaffin there is nevertheless an issue – the terms the FT uses to explain the EU: Mr
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MEPs should stop complaining that they are anonymous – they are responsible
OK, he’s a MP rather than a MEP now, but a piece by Jonathan Evans for Public Service Europe annoys me. There are some valid points in the piece on the way the EP and Westminster work, but this is
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What would leaving the EU actually mean in practice?
In 2005 I went to France to campaign in the referendum on the European Constitution, making the case for oui. One thing about that campaign has been with me ever since: it was clear what oui would mean (France would
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