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Trying to make sense of EU politics is quite difficult. Good story-telling is almost impossible because too many people are involved in too many issues. Convincing analysis is hard because the amount of time you have to invest in research is often not proportionate to the amount of insight you get. Yet, we have to […]
“BEPA has developed the concept of the ‘Berlaymont Papers‘ which will make available to a wider public some of the key thinking going on within the service. The first issue of the ‘Berlaymont Papers’, building on the Workshop on the Arab Spring organised with IFRI, was released in January 2012. A second one, on European think tanks, is planned […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
At the recent Personal Democracy Forum Brussels we already got a sneak preview by Stephen Clark to the new EP Newshub. Now it’s officially out there. As far as I understand the thing, it is supposed to bring together everything said from the inside of the European Parliament – by MEPs, political groups as well as the […]
You may wonder: What is the most important, the most pressing, and thus the most recurring problem in EU policy-making for EU member states? The financial and economic crises? The European agriculture? High-speed internet for disconnected regions? Not really. In fact, the most recurring problem is “delegated acts“, a special legal instrument introduced by […]
In the penultimate vote, ACTA has been rejected 19 to 12 votes in the leading International Trade (INTA) committee of the European Parliament. If this vote is confirmed in the plenary on 4 July 2012, this may be the year in which the Commission realised the relevance of social media. It might be the year in […]
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