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I just watched the the Eurogroup press conference with Eurogroup president Juncker, Commissioner Rehn and EFSF chief Regling. I didn’t expect anything substantive – those press conference rarely offer great insights – but than I heard Juncker talk about the future European Stability Mechanism (ESM) – the long-term versions of the EFSF bailout fund – […]
The Norwegian Government has just published a 900-page long report titled “Outside and Inside – Norway’s agreements with the European Union” (the link leads to the English translation of the 1st chapter). The report summarises the scope of Europeanisation of Norway and the implications this has for the country and involved notable (EU) scholars such as […]
Fellow Bloggingportal.eu editor Mathew has just published an excellent piece titled “Of technocrats, journalistic balance and telling EU stories“. His post reflects in a way what I try with this blog, that is to think about whether translation between the world of self-imposed balance and reason and the world of purposeful (or purposeless) conflict of […]
It’s the mid-term exams in the European Parliament, and not just the person on the president’s chair has changed, but so do a good number of the chairs of the parliamentary committees. Some stay apparently, others change. What the exact rules for this castling are? Nobody knows. Mabe the EP web editors could explain… Thanks to […]
The European Peoples Party (EPP) in the European Parliament is more and more showing face. It votes collectively against more EU transparency. And it defends Victor Orban’s “new” Hungary arguing that all his government did was to abolish “a Stalinist constitution”, following the defence line of Orban. That’s why it is worth listening to Daniel […]
Yesterday, Martin Schulz (Socialists & Democrats) was elected President of the European Parliament until 2014. But while his acceptance speech, although quite nice, probably will not be remembered as one of the major political speeches in 2012, one line of it still caught my attention (my highlight): “If our Parliament is to become more visible, if […]
Together with Andy, I went to the Parlamentarium, the new EU Parliament visitors’ centre, yesterday. One day later I actually still don’t know what to think about it. It kind of feels like a cosy and fancy vision of the European Parliament, with some interesting features and some strange things that don’t make sense. Parlamentarium making-of video After getting […]
As you may remember, the last European Council meeting on 8 & 9 December 2011 ended with the conclusion that no unanimity for a Treaty change was achieved. Thus, an intergovernmental treaty was needed to move ahead to continue the anti-crisis measures. Reading through the Commission meeting protocol of the session following this European Council […]
Today, I’ve made the following request for documents to the EU Commission (links added): “In line with Regulation 1049/2001 and in combination with Commission Decision 2011/833/EU on the the reuse of Commission documents, in particular Article 8.1, I request access to the full database of the “Register of Commission expert groups and other similar entities” […]
What restores confidence and faith in the EU? What motivates citizens to become involved, to care, to listen to what EU politics can bring to them? The Danish Presidency has given its first answer: By making lame PR videos with soft colours, soft background music and a lot of soft blabla. How much this is […]
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