Monthly Archives: April 2012

On the road to #rp12: Multilingual EU blogging, translations and the fascination of Presseurop

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The EU-focussed blogosphere is dominated by English language blogs. The search for multilingual EU blogging is cumbersome, even when pan-European political debates take place on issues of common interest. Some of the solutions to overcome these problems are (1) bilingual EU blogs, (2) EU bloggers writing different blogs in different languages, (3) ad hoc cross-blog translation as [...]

Spanish government wants border controls for ECB meeting in Barcelona

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According to Council document published yesterday, the Spanish government wants to introduce border controls at its borders to France and at the airports of Barcelona and Girona from 28 April to  4 May. The reason: “From 2 to 4 May 2012 a meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) will be held [...]

Commissioner Damanaki answers my provocative question on the CFP reform

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Knowing that I am somehow interested in EU fisheries policy, the Debating Europe team recently asked me on Twitter whether I had any question for EU fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki. I chose the rather provocative question which of the two major proposals for the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) – the discard ban [...]

EU Council transparency: New procedures and 2011 statistics

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Recently, I have remarked changes in the procedures for handling access to documents requests in the EU Council. Especially a new written procedure sparked some protest among EU member states, which led to the need to clarify the difference between the informal and formal procedures in the responsible Working Party on Information (meeting summary, p. [...]

An EU expert group to foster innovation and creativity

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Recently, the EU Council Youth Working Party – the working-level group of member states’ representatives on youth issues – has passed (draft) Council Conclusions on fostering the creative and innovative potential of young people. What is “funny” and most typical for EU Council “politics” is that the only concrete decision these so-called conclusions contain is [...]

Access to documents in EU fisheries: A Danish case

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In yesterday’s newsletter by the Danish Fishermen’s Association (Danmarks Fiskeriforening) I read the following interesting paragraph: “Danmarks Fiskeriforening har bedt om aktindsigt i sagen omkring muslinger i Limfjorden, hvor Danmarks Naturfredningsforening har klaget til EU over fiskeriet af muslinger. Det har ført til flere breve fra EU-Kommissionen til Danmark og omvendt, og derfor har fiskeriforeningen [...]

First public summary of a meeting of the Council Working Party on Information

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Sometimes, even the EU Council can surprise me. This time by issuing the first ever public summary (as far as I know) of a meeting of the Working Party on Information, which is the working group of member states’ officials dealing with access to documents requests and the reform of Regulation 1049/2001 on Access to EU Documents. [...]

On the road to #rp12: Women don’t blog about EU politics

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It’s not big news that the political blogospheres are dominated by alpha males, which is quite unsatisfactory because blogging as such isn’t. The problem may be that men decide what is political blogging and what isn’t. What about EU blogging in this regard? A quick look into the euroblogosphere does not at all contradict this view of male [...]

Facenuke or: A failed social network visualisation by Greenpeace

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The image above (click on the image for full size or go here to explore the network) is a network visualisation of the energy sector in France. Or so at least claims Greenpeace France. It looks nice, it looks plausible but methodological it is poorly done and therefore creates the impression of a network where [...]

Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy: Upcoming debate in the EU Council

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After the first orientation debate in the Council focussed on discards policy, the next Fisheries Council meeting on 26 and 27 April 2012 will continue the debate among member states’ ministers on the future Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) of the European Union. In a summary and preparation document (Update: Revised version of the document of 20 April), the [...]