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============= UPDATE (15 December 2017): The European Ombudsman has concluded that the European Commission did not provide me with sufficient access to documents in my research on EU leaks. The full case assessment by the Ombudsman is published here. The Commission now has time until March to reassess my requests for access. ============= Today, my […]
One year ago, I sent an email to the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye (@davidkaye), in reaction to a public consultation, not knowing whether it mattered. Now that his report on “Access to Information in International Organizations” is published, I realized that I was one […]
I’ve just read Jon Worth’s blog post about why he’s calm about the start of the Article 50 negotiations that will most likely lead to Brexit, even if these negotiations are heading to a fight. After spending the best of my last three years researching budgeting in international organisations, including the effects of budget cuts […]
In our research on UN budgeting (results and early insights published for example here, here, here), we follow budget procedures throughout the UN system, in particular in the UN proper and in the Specialised Agencies of the UN. This post collects the most relevant documents, in particular UN system budget outlines, proposals, and final budgets adopted. The […]
Today, the scale of the budget cuts of the Trump administration to the United Nations system has been officially announced; and this could be massive. According to various reports – Foreign Policy, Washington Post, IRIN News (great visuals!), CBS News, UN Dispatch, PassBlue, Al Jazeera – up to 37% of the current US contributions to the UN cut be […]
Last year, I spent some days in the UN archives in New York to find out more about the topic of my current research on budgeting in the United Nations. As I am going through the material (hundreds of photos of archive documents), I stumbled over a document that is only incidentally relevant to my research: […]
Political science, probably like many other social sciences, seems stuck in an age that many of our students have never lived, and will never live. Our students live in an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and of problems that are far beyond local borders in a world dominated by thinking within borders. In this age, it is […]
— For my ongoing coverage of the budget procedures in the UN system for 2018-19 (or 2018-21), please follow the link. — Finding reliable figures on the budgets and finances of the United Nations (UN) system is not easy, unless you know where to look for them. I’ll try to present some of this below and […]
Yesterday, I was working on a new academic paper on how to do research on EU leaks. And then first the Greens presented their EUleaks platform and later EurActiv published this article about the new Commission anti-leak strategy. So below I publish an internal Council document with its measures to prevent leaks. My interest on EU leaks […]
From Thursday, I will again teach a 2-week European Studies intensive course here in Munich, with students from China, South Korea, Jordan, India, Canada and different EU countries. When I taught the course for the first time in 2014, I was just back from living in Brussels where I had worked for the EU Office […]
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