Rumours of tensions between David Cameron and Boris Johnson rumble on, as covered today by Alex at Labour List. I don’t want to comment on Boris vs. Cameron as such; others are better placed to debate that. I just have 2 small remarks. First, Britain has had more than a […]
I’m just back at my desk after a week in a small village France with my parents. My laptop is out of action so I was without e-mail and internet for a week – quite refreshing. It also gave me plenty of time to think and to discuss things with […]
European Citizen has an interesting and thoughful post about why Guy Verhofstadt’s statement that “The three largest groups in the European Parliament announced today their commitment to pro-European values” is essentially the wrong approach. European Citizen’s critique is not too far away from my own analysis of the travails of […]
I’ve had a few interesting experiences with what I would call the media establishment over the last few weeks, notably when asked to present the atheist bus campaign at Medienforum.NRW in Köln and at the European Communication Summit in Brussels. Köln was a panel discussion in German, while Bruxelles was […]
There has been a bit of debate on Twitter this morning between @eurosocialiste and @boriswandoren about the ongoing behaviour of politicians in the European Parliament, specifically with regard to the behaviour of the socialists who have caved in and agreed with the EPP to carve up the positions in the […]
There were a few messages on Twitter and a lengthy post from ResEuropa about the prospect of Baroness Shriti Vadera being appointed as the British member of the European Commission this autumn. The story stems from this article in The Times. Firstly, let me set the record straight from the […]
Change or die is the message to the PES from Poul Nyrup Rasmussen on Labourlist today, and he has this to say about the EP: We now face the least progressive European Parliament in its history, with a far more eurosceptic and nationalist right-wing than ever before. Moreover, we also […]
It’s been another silly day of do-they, don’t-they with regard to the composition of the political groups in the European Parliament. The ECRG lost one MEP (Takkula, Finland) and gained one (Tomaszewski, Lithuania). Meanwhile on the other side of the political spectrum the Socialist Group has put its new name […]
I’m no fan of the Tory Party or indeed any of the parties they are cooperating with in their new political group in the European Parliament, the ECRG – European Conservatives and Reformists Group. Yet even I cannot have imagined how soon things would start to crack, for today Hannu […]
The UK Tories have today announced the formation of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECRG) in the European Parliament. The group will have 55 MEPs – 25 UK Tories, and Jim Nicholson from Northern Ireland, 15 Poles from PiS, 9 Czechs from ODS, and then 1 MEP from each […]
“I just don’t get Twitter” – words I often here uttered in political circles in Brussels and London. How can 140 characters be used to communicate effectively? This is a first effort to explain how to use Twitter in a political context. Firstly the Twitter slogan “What are you doing?” […]
I managed to avoid the milk-farmer chaos in Brussels on Thursday and Friday – hundreds of tractors driving slowly to bring protests about low milk prices to the European Council. But what exactly are the farmers whingeing about, and what should be done about it? This piece from EUObserver has […]
