Back in January 2009, our little experiment called Bloggingportal.eu officially started and today, three years later, we are still here. Three years in the life of a social media project is long, especially with the world of social media rapidly developing over this time.
We are therefore grateful to celebrate our third anniversary in public today. During our third year, we have selected 1374 posts in about a dozen European languages for our Editors’ Choice out of a stream of now ~900 blogs which have published several 10k posts over the last year, many of which have also been tagged by us.
Twelve of our editors have published congratulations, personal experiences, criticism, statistics and further thoughts around our project and the state of the EU blogosphere. Here are some quotes from and the links to their anniversary blog posts:
Jon Worth in “Today marks 3 years of our little blogging project“ reminds you where the story of Bloggingportal.eu actually started:
“It started as a conversation between Stefan, Andreas and I, and all the coding work was done by Stefan. The inspiration for it came from this blog post I wrote, and I still own the domain name. Beyond that I am a rather inactive partner in the enterprise these days – others have taken on the everyday work.“
Kosmopolit in “3loggingportal.eu“ confirms Jon’s story and adds a mysterious table to the history of Bloggingportal.eu. He continues to invite new people to our project, because the portal needs fresh blood:
”I remember sitting around a huge table in a flat in Brussels – with a certain Jon Worth and the (back then) mysterious Brusselsblogger – dreaming up something that is now known as bloggingportal. […] Ironically I am blogging this while sitting at exactly the same (and now truly) legendary table in a flat in London… Well, in many ways I would not be here without bloggingportal and all the people I met through the project. So thanks a lot for all your help and support!“
Eurocentrique in “Never waste a good (media) crisis“ tells that she has found through traditional media to our platform and gives an account of the state of the Greek blogosphere today:
“The first time I saw any posts from the bloggingportal, was not online but in print. Suprisingly and by no movements of my own either. The then Editor of New Europe Newspaper Alexandros Coronakis had decided that what we needed was a page for blogs focusing on Europe in the newspaper. […] Bloggingportal should see more Greek blogs in 2012, I feel they will be even more powerful in this fourth year of the economic crisis and the bailouts hang in the balance.“
Mathew Lowry in “Happy Birthday, BloggingPortal(?)“ puts his finger into our wounds by pointing to the rather grave deficiencies of our project, including a reminder to a heavy and painful debate about the future of the platform that didn’t make us move forward and instead left some darker traces in our collective memory:
“BloggingPortal (should) offer something important to practically everyone who wants to contribute to debates on EU policy. […] it (should) have a structuring effect, flipping the EU Online public space out of its current chicken-and-egg situation into a virtuous spiral, where the network effect kicks in and makes growth exponential. […] There’s only one problem with this theory: It hasn’t happened. […] The reason is unchanged since I wrote that Bloggingportal2 post in mid-2010: there are no resources (BP editors are all volunteers), and we are absolutely unstructured, with no internal process for moving forward. Back then I made some suggestions to turn it into a social business, and was accused of wanting to ‘take it over to make money’ – the second time, incidentally, that I’ve been accused of having secret, evil plans vis a vis the Euroblogosphere (here’s the first).“
Ralf Grahn in “Information Society, online media and Bloggingportal.eu“ chose to look into what the portal actually provides in a specific policy field. His account may be representative for other areas, too, namely that we cover some fields pretty well, but still miss out a lot that is out there:
“If I look at the information society themes, such as copyright, e-commerce, piracy, entrepreneurship, data protection etc., as well as matters related to online media, I feel that you can keep fairly well up to date by following all new posts on Bloggingportal.eu, not only the editors’ choice (front page). However, many of the best European tech and policy blogs have not yet found their way to Bloggingportal.eu, even if the EU is an important hub for the ITC issues debated both at global and at national level.“
André in “Here are the Eurobloggers“ portraits the five types of Eurobloggers that you may most likely come across on Bloggingportal.eu:
“I am a journalist working for a national newspaper or an audiovisual media. I am caught between the political discussion in my member state and the discussions in the hallways of the European institutions in Brussels […] I am a professional working in the European institutions or a lobby group. […] I study the European Union. […] I don’t care about the European Union. […] My media team is handling my blog for me. They also handle my Twitter. Our media analysts told us that European citizens all start going online.“
Michaël Malherbe in “BloggingPortal fête ses 3 ans : qui sont les Eurobloggeurs, ces indignés de l’UE ?“ asks not only who those famous Eurobloggers are but also goes one step further questioning the influences of this herd of cats that functions without any structure. He finds the answer in some concrete projects that took place over the last year:
“Après que le chef du service de presse du Parlement européen ait soulevé la question en juin 2010 « Should serious EU bloggers get some sort of accreditation to EU institutions?But on what criteria? », c’est grâce aux porte-parole de la présidence hongroise du Conseil de l’UE en 2011, que la place des Eurobloggeurs est devenue plus sensible lorsque des accréditations aux réunions du Conseil ont été délivrées à quelques un d’entre nous. Dernièrement, c’est encore un Eurobloggeur qui, de manière totalement inédite, estinvité en janvier 2012 au voyage traditionnel de presse d’ouverture de la présidence semestrielle danoise.“
Ronny Patz in “Happy birthday: Bloggingportal.eu turns 3“ paints a mixed picture of the impact and relevance of Bloggingportal.eu. He shows that growth in the EU blogosphere and in EU social media more broadly has not made the project to develop further, despite some positive ad hoc impact:
“If you take the last weekly summary on Bloggingportal.eu, you can see that – much more than two years ago – EU blogs today speak about different EU-level policies, EU-level politicians, EU-level political debates, national politics with relevance beyond borders, general EU issues and the obligatory social media issues, both in very serious or more mocking styles. […] We … did not manage, except for a few times and topics, to bridge between different national spheres in EU matters and between the EU sphere and national blogospheres.“
Andrew Burgess in “Happy Birthday @BloggingPortal: three years young“ takes a wider look at the role of blogs in EU affairs and the function that Bloggingportal.eu plays in this game. More than that, he also feels the personal advantages it may have to be involved in a project like ours:
“Through BloggingPortal I have had the privilege of making some great friends, participating in discussions during the Hungarian Presidency about bloggers gettingaccreditation to attend and report on meetings of the European Council, attending an event hosted in London on EU-UK reporting, and even being invited by the European People’s Party to attend one of their leaders’ summits. And this is hopefully just the start.“
Eurocentric (Conor) in “Happy Birthday Bloggingportal.eu!” tries to explain why we may not have managed to reach out as much as we could have and why, even though we are an online project, physical meetings are still important to keep a project like ours running:
“The scope for positive engagement with the rest of the Euroblogosphere is extremely limited, as we try to remain neutral and to separate out what we do in our blogs (and what we might want to do in common through our blogs) and what is right for Bloggingportal’s independent position. (Do you think we’ve managed to maintain Bloggingportal as a neutral aggregation site for the Euroblogosphere?) But we’ve also hosted physical events (such as an event in London in December 2010), and represented Bloggingportal at other blogging events. I think these physical meetings are important, particularly given the diverse and geographically spread nature of Euroblogging (though a lot of editors tend to end up in the London-Brussels-Berlin triangle at some point)“
Martin in “3 years make for a lot of blogging“ gathered some statistics on our activities and the activities of the platform:
“A little over 200,000 individual blog posts went through the portal since 2009. (That makes for a lot of blogging if you ask me.) […]
5,203 individual blog posts were selected to be displayed on the homepage and more recently in our Twitter/Facebook feeds as well as our weekly summary ”The Week in Bloggingportal”. That makes 4.8 per day.”
Finally, Brusselsblogger calls out loud: “Bloggingportal.eu needs your help!“ and asks a number of questions on how the future of our portal could look like:
“It is unclear where the project is heading and whether it makes sense to aim for a multilingual aggregation model that is based on manual editorial selection. Would it be better if bloggingportal focusses on simply providing the best, most comprehensive and always up to date list of EU blogs – and bloggers? Or should it just call for more volunteers to join the project as editors, potentially covering more languages? Is there a future for EU blogging as such if most well known EU blogs have massively decreased the number of posts written over the past 2 years, with Twitter taking over as quick one-line-commenting-and-linking tool?“
You see from all these contributions that we have good reasons to celebrate our third birthday, but that after three years of our existence a lot of questions remain open. Yet still, 12 of us have published an anniversary blog post yesterday, showing that the group as such is functioning quite well for what is just a bunch of EU bloggers running a volunteer platform. We may not have managed to develop the portal to a new level yet, but we still manage to blog and to coordinate if needed. This shows: We are Bloggingportal.eu!
© Hannes Swoboda
The week in triples
(1 ) First the Union got downgraded. Then the European Parliament was Schulzinised. The day after, it was Orbanised.
(2 ) Diana Wallis will leave the European Parliament. Commissioner Barnier may leave the European Commission. US citizens want to get rid of one of their governors.
(3 ) European defence policy has a future. The future of the Union is digital. Even the media have a future.
(4 ) The new fiscal compact for the EU divides. The fiscal compact involves tricky trade-offs. Therefore the negotations will be a success.
(5 ) Britain will never allow German leadership. What a stupid article. Didn’t you see the UK economy was shrinking?
(6 ) The internet needs global and local solutions, nothing in between. The new EU e-commerce directive is a Trojan horse for web censorship. But then, it can bring so many business opportunites.
(7 ) In the US, Europe is a dirty word. In Poland, Europe is loved. Croatians are blackmailed to like Europe.
(8 ) Can there be one overarching EU communication strategy? Is it good to be number four of the top ten worst EU communication activities? Is EU communication really like science communication?
(9 ) Hungary. Hungary. Hungary.
(10 ) EU citizens have quite different views on what constitutes personal data. This is not a triple. So go back to the previous triples if you haven’t read all posts we have linked.
“From post-Communist to present-Orban: People’s Republic of Hungary, the Republic of Hungary, the Orbarony of Hungary.”
Picture: BY CC Európa Pont
It looks like it’s going to be another interesting year for the EU (can I put myself on record as being the first person ever to write that sentence?) – but don’t worry, we’ll make sure that you’re kept right up to date here at Bloggingportal.eu – and it’s been yet another fascinating week (sure, what else is new?).
The tectonic plates of global diplomacy are shifting again, with the US cutting military spending and focusing on the Pacific, and more light being shed on the UK’s diplomatic handycap and the new fiscal pact. Not that France has had a particularly good week diplomatically. Meanwhile we’ve learnt a bit more about the Commission’s priorities for 2012, but on the other hand it seems the European Parliament just hopes that it can wish things better. It’s worth keeping an eye out for what’s going on on the Internet. Internet politics are always bubbling away, whether it’s grave threats to internet freedom in Belarus or data protection law infringements in the EU.
The Euro is not the only source of deja-vu this year – Hungary is back in the news after it’s new constitution came into force. It may need money from the IMF, but this constitution has caused concern in economic circles and the IMF has walked out of talks. Is Hungary really for junk? Not only that, but the changes raise questions about media plurality, judicial independence, the fairness of the electoral system and the independence of the central bank. What can the EU do when a Hungary turning against EU founding values threatens to damage the EU’s credibility? The president of the pan-European Party of European Socialists (which a Hungarian opposition party belongs) issued a strong attack on the actions of the Orban government – but will we see any action?
Maybe life in the EU is far too interesting… Why can’t we be more like Switzerland…?
January 8th, 2012 in
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Europe: Heartbroken.
BY CC RTP (Really Terrible Photographer)
What a week for Europe. We’ve had a new fiscal compact, and it seems we’ll all remember the day Britain left. Or should that be, the day the UK fell out of the EU?
The Euroblogosphere – and Europe’s media – is full of analysis and questions. There are, after all, many curious aspects to this veto. Was it a rejection of a UK that weakens the EU? Is it simply a sign of pandering to the Eurosceptic right? Did Cameron make a mistake or overplay his hand with Merkozy or simply loose the argument? Could it have played out differently or have been prevented? Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that conversation…
And what could the impact on Britain and Europe be? Has Cameron achieved anything? Some say it’s a disaster, that Cameron made a diplomatic mistake, and that Britain is on the edge of Europe. Perhaps the veto has even backfired on the City of London, the very thing Cameron set out to protect. But maybe Cameron will gain from the veto. If this is a sign that’s Britain will leave for good, then should we let them go – a case of “Thank you and goodbye“?
In any case, it’s clear that after any summit there are victors and victims, though sometimes it can be more of a feeling of victimhood. But there is, at least, one person completely happy with the summit’s outcome.
Then there’s the small matter of the new fiscal compact agreed between 23 Member States, with another 3 thinking of joining. The common currency may not be finished, but will it be enough to save the Euro? And is there a Euro-Middle who will accept it?
Picture by redclearwingbutterfly (on flickr) | | Creative Commons BY-NC-2.0
We will ignore him.
He’s not among us anymore. He’s to the Union what the Union is to him. Even if he couldn’t have done anything else, it is clear: He and his country are on the edge now. He said goodbye, but we do not react to him anymore.
Thank you and goodbye! But not to the Euro, just to him…!
PS: Other euroblog issues we didn’t notice because of him : Melancholia. Rating Agencies. Globalisation. Global warming. Slovenia and Croatia. Open data. Russian democracy. Summits in general.
BY CC jaldrome
Fiscal union is the order of the day, and some – including some with the money to boost the markets, though they seem to do that after every Euro announcement (maybe they just like Merkel’s soothing voice?) – think that there might be some light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s just hope it’s not another train. While there seems to be almost universal agreement that fiscal union is the answer (or part of the answer), this doesn’t hide the fact that there are two visions. Luckily with Bloggingportal you can keep up to date with all the latest gossip, views and ideas on the Eurozone, so when it comes to fiscal union it’s a bit easier to join the dots.*
BY CCfilipe ferreira
Though our common language these days is economics, it’s politics, stupid – if you want to be in the know in the Eurozone crisis, you need to know its politics. Even the existence of technocratic “nobody governments” can’t change how political this crisis is. What does France mean by intergovernmentalism – and what would it mean for the rest of us? How can Britain influence these historic events from the sidelines? Is the Polish government saying what we’re all thinking? And if we do integrate more, are we doing enough to make the EU more democratic – would, say, European primaries be up to the task? Should we Occupy Europe?
It’s not all about the Euro, though. Croatia’s membership of the EU is on the cards despite the obstacles, and what we’re spending money on for the common fisheries policy demands more attention. Hopefully with the European Parliament’s new website it will be easier to keep an eye on where our parliamentarians stand on all of this.
Phew! With so much going on in European politics, sooner or later they’re going to start handing out awards for being able to make sense of any of it!
* We keep tabs on the German Euroblogosphere too, so there’s no excuse!
When you listen to economic journalists these days, all you hear is “Iceberg ahead!“. They announce the perfect storm, not least after Germany failed to sell some of its bonds offered at a record-low interest rate this week.
These news close an incredibly busy November, and the most frequents words written during this month must have been “Merkel”, often combined with “Sarkozy”, (e.g. 1, 2), “Eurobonds” (e.g. 1, 2, 3) and everything around “economic governance” (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4). But does all this contribute to clarity?
Never has economic journalism and economic blogging been so confusing, so unrevealing, so close-to-useless. In the last 2-3 weeks, it was difficult to tell who was speculating more: Bankers or journalists? And all that we are left with is questions.
What happens when the EU breaks up? What happens when Greece leaves the EU? What happens with European communication in the face of the crisis? What happens when a professor takes over Italy?
Maybe, however, the EU is not the Titanic that will hit an iceberg and the only question left will be how quick the ship is sinking. Maybe the EU is the iceberg and the crisis is the Titanic. And so maybe what we see these days politically and economically is just one seventh of what our Union is made of, and six seventh are hidden below the surface.
Below the surface, there is a cultural Europe, a political Europe, a social Europe, a multilingual Europe, a Europe of friendship and a Europe of open borders.
In this Europe, a blog post on lazy EU journalism gets read and forwarded hundred of times and is translated within two weeks in 6-7 languages (e.g. Dutch and Spanish). In this Europe, a European court puts barriers against private policing of the internet. In this Europe, environmentaldata from an EU agency help to understand where the biggest polluters are – and maybe to act against the costs that derive from such pollution.
In this Europe, a Romanian deputy, a UK youth activist, a Northern Irish European citizen and a Finnish lawyer blog about the convention of European Socialists in Brussels while two other British citizens blog from the meeting of European Liberals in Palermo.
In this Europe, a critical public covers intransparent decision-making in the European Parliament and deputies who support even more intransparency. In this Europe, there are calls for more democracy, for a common defence, and even those who appeared to be eurosceptics demand a common democratic federation.
There is much more Europe below the surface of the EU iceberg than those who construct this economic and monetary crisis as a crisis of the common European project. True, it’s hard to know where our currency and economy will stand in one or in six months time, but the Titanic, as gigantic as it was, did not sink the iceberg – it may just have changed the course that this iceberg took on the ocean…
Photo by 0xFCAF on flickr – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Almost 60 blog post have been promoted by our editors during the last week, and we’ve selected relevant quotes from each of these posts for this week’s “The Week in Bloggingportal” without any further comment:
“Never before has a meeting of the G7, later the G8 and now the G20, seen such chaos.” (European Dialogue)
“The European leaders … stumble from one economic crisis to another, do not tackle other elementary problems, but seem to only administer the disaster.” (The New Federalist)
“Cowen … Sócrates … Kiviniemi … Radicova … Papandreou … Berlusconi …” (Place du Luxembourg)
“The age when the west could dictate the global security agenda seems to be well and truly over.” (Public Service Europe)
“Fears remain that Italy will be the next casualty of the eurozone crisis.” (FT – The World)
“The markets are digesting to news from Rome.” (FT – The World)
“Italy is broke. There are reasons for this.” (Revolting Europe)
“Don’t blame Berlusconi, blame the Italians themselves. And their history.” (Adriano Farano)
“This is the way the euro ends. Not with a bang but with bunga-bunga.” (Social Europe Journal)
“Your post-Berlusconi hangover is set to get a lot worse.” (Revolting Europe)
“… policymakers and financiers are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of the crisis on global liquidity levels.” (FT – The World)
“Once the recriminations start, the survival of the European Union and its single market would be under question. It’s all a frightening prospect. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.” (Free Exchange)
“Le scénario du pire est en train de se produire : les banques européennes se débarrassent à tour de bras de la dette souveraine des pays de la zone euro jugés « à risques », au risque de précipiter la monnaie unique dans le gouffre.” (Coulisses de Bruxelles)
“This is a systemic crisis that threatens not only the euro but the world economy in its entirety.” (Yanis Varoufakis)
“… in the past six years the blog claimed on five separate occasions that his sex and corruption scandals were about to topple [Berlusconi]” (Gulf Stream Blues)
“Men det finns också en ömsesidig oro för att EU delas upp i två lag.” (europaportalen.se)
“Poland shouldn’t abandon a plan to join the euro zone because it will risk remaining outside the core of European integration” (Emerging Europe)
“France, or Mr Sarkozy at any rate, does not appear to have got over its resentment of the EU’s enlargement.” (Charlemagne)
“Schaffen wir eine neue Stabilitätsunion und setzen die Europäische Integration, die Deutschland und Europa zu Frieden und Wohlstand geführt hat, fort oder sehen wir tatenlos zu, wenn unsere Partnerländer vor dem finanziellen (und früher oder später gesellschaftlichen) Kollaps stehen, mit allen Auswirkungen für die gemeinsame Währung und unsere (Export-)Wirtschaft?” (Patrick L. Schunn)
“… will more direct democracy mean future generations (who cannot vote) must pay for our mistakes?” (Debating Europe)
“La rencontre des égoïsmes nationaux au Conseil européen ne permet pas la conduite d’une politique ambitieuse et efficace.” (Le Taurillon)
“Citizens turned into spectators of half-hearted euro-crisis solutions and the search for a scapegoat for the sovereign debt crisis … diverts attention away from the real questions: do we want a fiscal union now and thus remedy the basic, but essential flaw of EMU since its introduction?” (ECFR’s blog)
“Europe needs a normal central bank – one that does not merely target inflation like an automaton, but that also understands its responsibilities as a lender of last resort.” (Social Europe Journal)
“Die Europäische Zentralbank muss entweder selbst massiv eingreifen und italienische Anleihen kaufen – oder zum „lender of last resort“ für den EFSF werden.” (Lost in Europe)
“… the ECB has more than enough “capital” to underwrite the peripheral bond markets, without this being inflationary in the long run.” (Gavyn Davies)
“… only radical measures will save the eurozone and its constituent economies from an apocalyptic implosion.” (Protesilaos Stavrou)
“Un nouveau traité est nécessaire mais il devra être négocié et signé entre les 27 quitte à autoriser des dérogations en distinguant le cas des pays qui souhaitent participer à l’union monétaire et ceux qui ne le souhaitent pas” (Robert Toulemon)
“Nach dem Abgang Berlusconis und Papandreous kursieren in Brüssel nun Gerüchte, dass Kanzlerin Merkel und Frankreichs Präsident Sarkozy an einer „Kern-Eurozone“ basteln, an der nur solide Staaten teilnehmen sollen.” (Lost in EUrope)
“How can regulations (capital, liquidity, tax, activity restrictions) be shaped such that they force financial institutions to internalize all the repercussions of their risk, especially the external costs of their potential failure?” (All about Finance)
“perhaps … eurozone citizens are so discontented that they are demanding return to national currencies.” (Passing comments)
“Some MEPs may have forgotten the cash-for-influence scandal in March, but European voters may have better memories.” (Brussels Sunshine)
“… in the European Parliament on Wednesday. Regionalists, devolutionists and soft nationalists … gathered to discuss “The revival of nations in a context of economic turbulences”.” (Behind The Scenes)
“There is clearly a growing volume of online support for populist movements; support which is, in many instances, being converted into offline activism and electoral gains.” (Demos)
“Cameron is walking a tightrope between the Eurosceptics in his own party and beyond, and his coalition allies’ more sympathetic attitude towards Brussels.” (Public Service Europe)
“the Grand Chamber … has formulated a new rule designed to allow a person who has suffered ‘an infringement of his personality rights by means of the internet’ to bring an action in one forum in respect of all the damage caused to him or her” (eutopia law)
“‘Content-Flatrate: Eine Lösung für das Problem illegaler Tauschbörsen?’” (Helga Trüpel)
“The internal auditors wrote to DG Communication team last year looking for help with their website. … Before … After …” (Waltzing Matilda)
“Der Masterplan der Kommission, Netzneutralität durch Transparenz und einfaches Wechseln der Anbieter zu sichern, reicht … in sehr vielen Fällen nicht aus.” (vasistas?)
“Das EU-Parlament ist ja gar kein vernünftiges Parlament. Also kann man es getrost mit Winzparteien und Politsektierern vollpacken.” (Verfassungsblog) [Update: See comment by @Verfassungsblog below - this quote is an ironic paraphrase of a case at the German Constitutional Court.]
“the real problem behind discussion on the European Arrest Warrant: negotiations will always be driven by political agendas, not legal ones.” (eutopia law)
“Israel is the most active non-European participant in the EU’s multi-annual scientific research programme … the beneficiaries of this largesse include weapons manufacturers and technology firms that supply Israel with the tools of repression and occupation” (David Cronin)
“The Rise of the Technocrats” (Crooked Timber)
“…the Council wants the Commission to … lower EU officials’ pay or to prevent any … further raise in salary.” (Polscieu)
“The Hackathon was launched at the European Parliament – perhaps the first time hackers ever had been officially invited into a legislative institutiion [sic!].” (Google European Public Policy Blog)
“Google or other special searches can make your life much – or at least a little – easier when trying to find relevant information in the messy or hard to use maze of EU websites.” (Polscieu)
“The idea of athletes being forced to wear the EU flag was drivel then, and is still drivel.” (Zelo Street)
“Yesterday, the Express did just that as its front cover thundered ‘EU Rules To Slash House Prices’. Except – no surprise here – it’s not true.” (Liberal Conspiracy)
“Tonight at midnight Mary McAleese finishes her Presidency after 14 years as President of the Republic of Ireland.” (Stephen Spillane)
“The fact that we ask candidates the same questions in both local and national elections explains a lot about why Ireland is the way it is today.” (Jason O’Mahony)
“Eurozone roundup” (Erkan’s Field Diary)
“… there are two indispensable iPhone apps to follow EU affairs and keep with the changing environment of EU institutions: EUssentials and EurActiv, while on the iPad, PressEurop clearly stands out to follow EU-related news.” (Aurelia Valtat)
“denouncing anti-EU Stalinists is like shooting fish in a barrel” (Shiraz Socialist)
“Europa steht vor den größten Veränderungen seit dem Fall der Mauer” (Treffpunkt Europa)
“Ik heb nog nooit zo’n spannend tijdsgewricht meegemaakt. De val van de muur was natuurlijk zeer indrukwekkend omdat het een Europese belofte in zich droeg.” (Arend Jan Boekestijn)
“… there might be some big proposals to come from the Germans on further European integration – and, hearteningly, building greater democratic legitimacy.” (Demsoc)
“Je crois au contraire qu’en ces temps de disette où l’UE est plus que jamais mal-aimée et incomprise, ce type de communication vise (pour une fois) juste.” (Un européen jamais content)
“In order to overcome the crises in the eurozone and the wider European Union, a group of Spanish eurobloggers has launched an appeal for More Europe.” (Grahnlaw)
“We need people to remind us why is so important the European project, and why we need to work still on it.” (Spanishwalker)
“no comment” (Mannekin Pics)
Take your time to make sense of all the quotes – go and read the articles, comment directly or react on your own blogs. Just because we did not comment doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to say…!
The internal auditors wrote to DG Communication team last year looking for help with their website.
After the gouls and ghosties of Halloween, we get a week of high drama. EU politics has rarely been so exciting… though I expect most EU bloggers would prefer a slightly more boring (and slightly safer) script to work from. Like the Greek tragedy of old, the European family is at each others’ throats. Let us hope cannibalism, fratricide and incest, those jolly cornerstones of ancient Greek drama, do not await us in the final act.
Here’s the plot thus far: the British are angry at their cousins, the Germans (despite almost sharing a queen). The Germans are annoyed at the Greeks for calling a referendum only days after a hard-fought bail-out deal had been reached. Almost everybody is annoyed at Papandreou, including the Irish (who have their own problems to worry about). And the Americans are annoyed at everything that moves.
All that anger is getting a bit too complicated – perhaps it’s time to simplify things with everybody coming together and agreeing on a new political order? Or maybe it’s time to simplify things with a European break-up? Time, after our hubris, for a bit of European catharsis (which, one hopes, can come without the eating of our children, self-blinding, or the murder of our mother-wife).
However it plays out, the ‘Greek tragedy’ has seen the reappearance of that many-headed hydra: the dreaded ‘referenda’ question. Should countries decide constitutional issues through referenda? Or is this what what we pay politicians for? Maybe we should stop paying politicians. Time for a new age of philosopher-kings?
As the curtains come down on this episode of the Week in Bloggingportal, Paul Krugman takes a leaf out of Richard Wagner’s book. Is this the twilight of Europa? At least one thing is clear: we’re all going to kill each other over that lovely, lovely Rheingold.
Of course it’s not over, as they say, till the fat lady sings.
November 6th, 2011 in
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