Last week, the European Commission published its own legacy report in the form of a 600+ pages document titled “European Commission 2004 – 2014. A testimony by the president with selected documents“, opening the room for the first analyses of the legacy of 10 years with José Manuel Durão Barroso leading the European Commission. I have […]
UK politicians call Juncker arch-federalist, and the press has taken over this term, too. The Telegraph does it. The Guardian does it. The (Irish) Independent does it. The Washington Post does. What they show is their lack of perspective, of comparative analysis, with Juncker’s predecessor(s) and with his competitors for the Commission top-job. Had those media […]
On 28 May, the Wednesday after the European elections, Barroso reported back to the Commission from the informal dinner of heads of state and government the evening before in which the future European Commission President was discussed. After a quite general presentation of Barroso’s impressions of the informal dinner, the minutes of the European Commission College […]
After having read the minutes of the European Commission meeting of 14 May, I feel so, so sorry for the European Commission. In their discussion about the (then) upcoming European elections, all the Commissioners and the outgoing President Barroso seemed to think about was how unfairly they are treated (p. 16): “Turning to the European […]
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 […]
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 […]
EU Commission president Barroso and European Council President van Rompuy have written a letter to the G20 (pdf). Here is my translation “EU speak to human language” to show what they actually mean: The decisions we have taken in our G20 Summits to date have been crucial in steering us through the global financial and economic […]
This morning, EU Commission President Barroso delivered his “State of the Union” (text, video). We at Bloggingportal.eu have called for a Barroso Buzzword/Bullshit Bingo to be played, and I have proposed my own list of 10 words/phrases to be said during the speech. Here is how I succeeded: Europe 2020 – check 1x Crisis – […]