Two years ago, the European Union had its first true electoral campaign held in public for the selection of the EU’s chief administrator, the President of the European Commission. Now, although within a different institutional context, we witness a similar process in the United Nations: the first open nomination procedure for the next chief administrator […]
Last year, we saw the very first European elections with Spitzenkandidaten (‘lead candidates’) put forward by five major European Political Parties as future president of the European Commission. But how can it be that the Juncker’s EPP reports ~€ 1.75 million in “Election campaigns” expenditure while Schulz’ PES reports only ~€ 0.2 million? Jean-Claude Juncker, is […]
I’ve already had my say on the Spitzenkandidaten-process-debate. Yet, over the weekend, I had to laugh about the absurdity of one quote in Simon Nixon‘s Wall Street Journal blog post “Blame Merkel, not Cameron, for Juncker Mess“. Here’s what he wrote “Mr. Juncker is being foisted on the European Council by the European Parliament as a […]
On the last day of the European elections, I wrote that the post-electoral period will not be about the actual results but about how they are interpreted. And seeing the debates of the last week or so, I feel kind of confirmed. A heavily retweeted article from Jan Techau published today is just the last […]
Tonight, tomorrow, and Tuesday will be less about the results of the European Parliament elections, it will be all about spinning messages around the results of the European Parliament elections. If the pre-electoral polls are only roughly right, there may be a party with the largest number of seats, but there will be no clear […]