“[H]ow can the public debate necessary to make the EU a genuine ‘land of immigration’ take place if there is no common, democratic European ‘public sphere’, and no space for genuine intra-European political debate? The desire for such debate is connected to the need for a common sphere of social and public interaction within the […]
Published on by Ronny Patz | Comments Off on Extended book review: “La théorie de l’information” by Aurélien Bellanger
I first stumbled over “La théorie de l’information” by Aurélien Bellanger – published this summer – in a review by Le Soir about a month ago. It was a sunny Saturday morning, a rare occasion here in Brussels, and I was reading the weekend edition of the Belgian newspaper over a breakfast in a café. […]
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 […]
Maybe it has escaped my attention, but I just saw this European Council Decision dated 2 October plus this document dated 28 September that formally decides that the number of European Commissioners will not be reduced as originally foreseen in the EU Treaties. Instead, a special exception will be used made in concession to the Irish […]
“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 […]
Published on by Ronny Patz | Comments Off on Old stories, new stories: Fight for EU transparency and for EU documents
I haven’t been blogging much over here lately, because of my new job at the EU Office of Transparency International in which my digital attention is currently focused on this website and contributions to this Twitter account. Still, this wouldn’t keep me from blogging about other issues (like EU fisheries policy) if during my free hours […]
Published on by Ronny Patz | Comments Off on The 2012 Olympic Games in London on the European Union agenda
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 […]
Published on by Ronny Patz | Comments Off on Cyprus Presidency invites bloggers to the EU Council next week
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 […]
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