So it looks like the European Council has agreed a real-terms cut in the EU budget for the 2014-2020 period. This has, understandably, been labelled unacceptable by the 4 largest groups in the European Parliament. Yet, fearing coercion from Member States, EP President Martin Schulz and leader of the EPP...
The good news: President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz seems to have confirmed his commitment to a single seat for the European Parliament in a Swedish radio interview (very short summary from EUObserver here). Problem: he wants the seat to be Strasbourg and not Brussels. While such an arrangement...
It has just been announced that Diana Wallis is putting her name forward as a candidate for President of the European Parliament. She’s a long-standing Vice President of the Parliament, and is a British Liberal Democrat (who form part of the centrist ALDE Group). News about her candidacy here from...
Godfrey Bloom is a prat. That much was clear, even before this week’s incident (BBC, Wikipedia) where he referred to Martin Schulz, leader of the socialists in the European Parliament with the words “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”. This after all is the MEP best known until this week...
Back in the autumn of 2004 I was working in London. It was a year or so before I even started this blog and I was working as a civil servant on EU energy policy. News reached us that a controversial Italian nominee to the European Commission, Rocco Buttiglione, had...
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...
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...
Britain has ASDA, a rather lousy supermarket chain owned by Wal-Mart. Now Brussels has ASDE, the new name for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. The name stands for the Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. Which means the name is not too far away from ALDE, the acronym for...
The European Parliament Election results on Sunday were not good for social democratic and labour parties across Europe, polling 3% less than at the elections in 2004. PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, posting at Labourlist, states rather blandly that “We need more PES, not less PES” so as to do...
I’ve been hammering on and on at the PES and the issue of why socialists have not been able to nominate a candidate for President of the Commission to follow Barroso when the Portuguese’s term of office ends 31st October this year. The story behind all of this gets immensely...
My discontent about the lack of choice about the future President of the European Commission is well known. But it seems – bizarrely – that the choice of the President of the European Parliament might actually become a bit more interesting. President of the EP is a largely symbolic role,...