The London 2012 Olympic Games are on their way, and on the medal count it’s nation states that matter. Yet, when you look to the agendas of recent EU-level meetings and the matters the EU deals with, you will realise that the European Union is actually directly and indirectly implicated in what’s going on in London. Just […]
I just read the summary of last week’s EU Commission meeting (18 July 2012), and in there I stumbled over a very interesting quote from a discussion on two recent EU Court rulings*: “The PRESIDENT [Barroso] said that the potential consequences of these judgments were very far-reaching; leaving aside the damage done to the Commission’s reputation by […]
When in May the upcoming Cyprus Presidency of the EU Council announced they would want to meet with bloggers, I still wasn’t sure whether this would actually happen. I gave my five cents and when I was in Brussels soon after I met with the two spokespersons (Marianna & Nikos) of the Cyprus representation to brainstorm […]
Vor zwei Wochen habe ich bei UdL Digital – einem von e-plus/BASE gesponsorten Internettalk – mit Jürgen Trittin über Europa diskutiert. Wie ich mich selbst und die Diskussion gesehen habe, habe ich auch schon verbloggt. Was mir im Anschluss auffiel war, dass im Vergleich zu den vorherigen Talks erstaunlich wenig Zuschauer ihren Weg auf das […]
I will be moving to Brussels at the end of the month to work for the Transparency International EU Office. This weekend, I was discussing with my father how the social security aspects of this work would look like – he was mainly concerned about my pension rights – and I had to admit that […]
Ich hab letzte Woche, moderiert durch Cherno Jobatey, mit Jürgen Trittin über Europa diskutiert. Die leider zusammengeschnittene Fassung unsere ca. 45-minütigen Diskussion ist jetzt auf Youtube nachsehbar. Ich bin mir bis heute nicht ganz klar, ob das letztendlich sinnvoll war, und was ich damit meine habe ich auch schon aufgeschrieben. Aber vielleicht doch noch ein […]
Votewatch.eu has been relaunched on Monday, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s time doing so. Put in very simple terms, it’s a website that takes publicly available information from the European Parliament and the EU Council – in particular everything related to votes – and makes it accessible in a way that both […]
Ich hab in den letzten Tagen häufiger über Europa reden dürfen, reden müssen. Wenn man das tut, merkt man, dass das mitnichten einfach ist, dass man manchmal viel lieber nichts sagen würde, weil man, obwohl man das Richtige sagen möchte, doch nur das Falsche sagt. Vielleicht ist es besser, wenn man andere sprechen lässt, und […]
It may be just a minor issue, maybe I’m also getting things wrong, but there seem to be differences in how Commission President Barroso and Vice-President Rehn see the legal situation on the banking union. On 12 June, the Financial Times Brussels Blog quoted from an interview with José Manuel Durão Barroso that “Treaty change would […]
In general, I think that Barroso is not the right EU Commission President in these times of crises. He lacks the profile, the passion, the liveliness to convince citizens across the continent to see the value of a common European project, as flawed as it may be in practice. His only luck is that European […]