So embattled Swedish PM Reinfeldt invited Merkel, Cameron and Rutte to Harpsund and took them out in a small rowing boat (news summary here), and let photographers take pictures of this. Here’s the original: The Junckermonster – my own effort Putin, via @GeneralBoles Breaking apart, via @Spacexecadet Sinking, via @JOR_ID Just...
A tweet by Philip Oltermann caught my eye: Tactical mistake by pro-Junckerites to allow Cameron to lay claim to "reformist" tag. They want the more radical EU reform, why not say it? — Philip Oltermann (@philipoltermann) June 8, 2014 David Cameron is doing his best to spin himself, and his...
The title of this blog entry is intentionally contradictory. Yet it encompasses the central challenge the European Union in facing. To start, what are we supposed to do about democracy in the European Union, viewing democracy in the classical post-World War II consensus kind of way, where multi party representative...
So the European Council last night did not back Jean Claude Juncker as Commission President, instead inviting Herman Van Rompuy to consult about who should become Commission President between now and the end of June. He should, to use Merkel’s words, look at a “somewhat broader tableau of suitable persons”....
Let’s get the caveats out of the way first. I know the way the parties selected their Commission President candidates was imperfect. I know that none of the candidates has really shone. I know this process has not been dealt with with the same degree of seriousness right across the EU. I know that...
I write this blog entry as a convinced EU democrat. By that I mean that, faced with the options about how to solve the many problems the EU currently faces, actually trying to make democracy work at EU level is the least worst of the available options. Yes it is...
One of the supposed advantages of the European Commission top candidate / Spitzenkandidat process is that it gives some personality to the European Parliament election campaigns for the first time. I am hence very happy to see that televised debates between the main candidates are now also starting to take...
I’ve previously written about how the UK is absent from the EU’s Presidential Election (otherwise known as the top candidate, or Spitzenkandidat process), and while the essential content of that earlier post remains valid, I have reflected further about the implications for UK-EU relations from this process, and cannot see...
So the lineup for the first-ever Presidential Election in Europe, to select the Commission President 2014-2019, is complete – Martin Schulz for the Party of European Socialists (PES), Jean-Claude Juncker for the European People’s Party (EPP), Guy Verhofstadt for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE), José Bové and Ska...
Just over a week ago, as the EU Twittersphere was starting to turn its attention to the EPP’s Dublin Congress, I wondered what presence – if any – Jean-Claude Juncker had on Twitter. None was the answer. So on 2nd March, at 2117 CET, I registered @JC_Juncker, a spoof Twitter...
So the European People’s Party has a candidate for Commission President – Jean Claude Juncker. Tweet announcing the result is here. He’s going to be Merkel’s poodle. Image above is Creative Commons, Sharealike Licensed – can be used, for free, but must be attributed to Jon Worth, with a link...
Back in the early summer of 2013 I wrote a detailed series of blog posts about the future President of the European Commission. There were posts about EPP, PES and other candidates. Overall those posts have stood up well over the last 6 months. But with the EP elections just...