Dear José, I know you are in Berlin today, because I saw you on the livestream of the “New Narrative for Europe” conference earlier. I see you also put out a statement, saying that Europe is a State of Mind.
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The original blog: commentary about everything except transport
Dear José, I know you are in Berlin today, because I saw you on the livestream of the “New Narrative for Europe” conference earlier. I see you also put out a statement, saying that Europe is a State of Mind.
Continue reading
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
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In response to Barroso’s State of the Union address today, leader of the ALDE Group in the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt resorted to his tired old line. The pro-European forces should unite against Euroscepticism, he said, and this will define
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In a previous post I analysed the likely candidates from the centre left PES for Commission President. Here I examine who the centre right EPP might put forward. It is worth bearing in mind that the nomination process depends on
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So someone had the temerity to criticise the über-Eurocrat Barroso on the blog of the Eurocrat school! And then the blog post was removed, without explanation, as pointed out by @quarsan on Twitter, and argued on Facebook here. Anyway, thanks
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Oh here we go again. It seems the question of how an independent Scotland could work in the EU will never go away. Rather than focusing on the EU’s Nobel Prize, BBC’s Hard Talk asked Barroso about Scotland and the
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So the old master is back, working his rhetorical magic at a Business for New Europe / Chatham House event in London yesterday. The full text of his speech is here. At one level I welcome Blair’s intervention in the
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The European Commission, and Commissioners themselves, have progressively taken to Twitter over the past couple of years as a way of communicating with (at?) EU citizens. So how are they doing? This blog entry gives a quick summary. My starting
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It creeps up on you with alarming regularity… is it really a year ago that we last played every EU nerd’s party game, Barroso Bullshit Bingo? Anyway in just 2 days – on Wednesday at 0900 CET – our beloved
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At one level it has been a privilege to attend the Danish Presidency Press Trip for the past four days. I’m the first blogger ever to have been allowed to attend, and hopefully not the last. But the whole experience
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Have a read of this piece (see comments – link changed – a version is available here) on AP’s website about Barroso’s State of the European Union speech. It’s entitled “Top EU official seeks closer policy union” and then starts “A
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Barroso has just finished delivering his State of the European Union address to the European Parliament. While – as before – we had a bit of a chuckle in the blogosphere with buzzword bingo, this was a serious occasion and Barroso rose
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