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 […]
No Belgium Rollers this week (due to the European Council in Brussels), so a sortie into the countryside of Wallonia instead – 42km from Namur to Tienen, most of it on Ravel 2 (Ravel is the Walloon network of long distance cycle paths). The route is along an old railway, […]
As an alumnus of the College of Europe in Bruges I periodically get e-mails on the student e-mail lists. This one has recently reached me: Dear Alumni, Following the recent elections for the European Parliament, the nomination of the Commission’s President is now on the European Agenda. The European Movement […]
I’m at the final event of the Th!nk About It project in Rotterdam. We havge people from just about all Member States of the EU here, all of them bloggers, and the EP elections are now over. So how about use the knowledge in the room to look at the […]
