MONDAY WAS the official European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. It was designated as such in 2009 by the European Parliament, with the specific date of August 23 being chosen to commemorate the day the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was signed and Eastern Europe was secretly carved up between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That was 71 years ago this week.

This is the same week that the number of websites online with neo-nazi content has reached record highs. It’s also the same week that Grahnlaw tells us the EU has reached record lows in the most recent Eurobarometer popularity poll. It’s the week when the European Citizen asks if Europe is losing her moral authority, whilst France is busy arranging an “anti-Gypsy” meeting of large EU states without inviting the Commission.

It’s clear that France’s Roma deportations are fast becoming the EU’s problem as well. Is expelling the Roma even legal according to EU law? Yet the institutions are keeping largely silent, even as their popularity plunges. Meanwhile, Eurosceptic bloggers argue that the EU is to blame for the growing hatred of “Roma,” “Dagoes,” “Frogs” and “Huns.” The EU Referendum blog writes:

“Perhaps without [the EU], we would have come to accept the Germans, the French and the Italians for what they are – jolly decent and sensible members of the human race. Instead, the more and more they stuff their euro-crap down our gullets, the more and more are are inclined to think of a reincarnated Reich and look forward to a replay of the events 70 years ago.”

Which is a stunning display of ignorance and self-delusion. Stunning, because the rising hatred is not confined to “Roma,” “Dagoes,” “Frogs” and “Huns” – it includes all foreigners and minorities, including (and probably mostly) non-Europeans. Stunning, because 71 years ago, Europeans didn’t need the EU to ignite their hatred. They did it very well on their own. Today, the idea that the EU is somehow encouraging the rise of the Far-Right (or, indeed, the Far-Left) is ridiculous. If anything, the problem does not come from the EU doing too much. It comes from the EU not speaking out.

Image credits: CC / Flickr – BY-NC-ND 2.0 UK – Chad Johnson

Originally posted on Eurogoblin.eu

WHAT’S BEEN GOING on in the EU blogosphere this week, then? Well – we’re still in silly-season; the European parliament is on recess and our glorious leaders are all on holiday. So, we’re seeing posts of a slightly more… philosophical bent. For example – are the British obsessed with the politics of English-speaking countries at the expense of their European neighbours? This question prompted a blog post from a British MEP, followed by a slightly miffed response from me and Grahnlaw, a Finnish euroblogger.

We’ve also been telling ghost stories around the camp-fire. If you’re interested in the terrible plight of the spooky ghost MEPs (those 18 European parliamentarians created by the Treaty of Lisbon but not yet allowed to vote because of arcane procedural reasons) then you’re in luck; one of them has spoken out in a blog post here. It’s an interesting post – but what I want to know is if these MEPs have been receiving full pay and expenses during their stint as “observers.”

Still, there’s also been a surprising amount of number-crunching going on this week. Crooked Timber has done an interesting comparison of the economies of the EU and US – coming to the conclusion that they’re more-or-less equal in terms of productivity. There’s also a detailed look at the Bulgarian economy from A Fistful of Euros; the Wall Street Journal has been examining how much different EU citizens contribute to the EU budget and Transparency International has put together a mash-up proof-of-concept investigating how data-visualisation tools could help fight EU corruption.

Finally, the “Day of Multilingual Blogging” on September 26th has a Facebook event set up already. Sign up now, and better get thinking up that second-language post you’ll put up in September.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Cross-posted on Eurogoblin.eu ; Image credits: CC / Flickr – BY-NC-ND 2.0 – Beni Ishaque Luthor

TAX AND POLITICS have been amongst the topics discussed by eurobloggers this week. A campaign has started up to encourage the Party of European Socialists (PES) to hold a primary before they nominate their candidate for Commission President. PES members would, according to the proposed system, vote for their preferred candidate (which might force the PES to actually nominate somebody and avoid a repeat of the embarrassing situation in 2009 when Barroso was re-elected unopposed). Some bloggers agree – seeing this as a strengthening of parliamentary democracy at the EU level. Others, however, would prefer a complete overhaul of the post of Commission President until it resembled something more like a presidential system.

The other big debate online (at least, in the English-speaking blogosphere) has been about taxation. Should the EU get increased powers of direct taxation? The EU already raises about 1/6th of its revenue through VAT, but would a direct “EU tax” increase transparency? Many are against the idea, while others argue that the entire debate has been approached in completely the wrong way. The two issues (representation and taxation) are, perhaps, not unrelated. Can the EU legitimately claim powers of direct taxation without also narrowing the alarmingly wide democratic deficit? Would direct taxation really increase transparency? Could it help open up the closed nature of certain EU institutions (another “rather opaque Council body” was added to the comitology recently).

IT’S BEEN a very Anglophone Week in Bloggingportal this week. We’ve been conducting some analysis behind closed doors at Bloggingportal towers, looking at the languages people blog in – and we’ve found that English dominates (at least, where the Week in Bloggingportal is concerned). A few eurobloggers have already started a comment policy encouraging comments in other languages, and machine translation will often let a person understand (if not perfectly) a foreign article or blog post. September 26th will be the European Day of Languages, and it’s an opportunity for European bloggers to post in a second language. More details to follow closer to the date, but Bloggingportal would like to encourage some sort of Euroblog day of languages.

Anyway, to close – why not read this German-language blog post about life (and football) in Estonia. That’s all this week, folks!

Image Credits: CC / Flickr – BY-NC-ND by Lif…

THIS WEEK at Bloggingportal Towers, we’ve all been playing computer games. Citzalia is an online computer game commissioned by the European Parliament – a 3D world where citizens can make-pretend they’re involved in Brussels politics (except it’s better than Brussels politics – it’s a cute version with cartoon MEPs, unlike the boring real-life version). Jon Worth broke the story, but it was swiftly followed up by British eurosceptics Tim Worstall, Open Europe, England Expects and Christopher Booker of the Telegraph. The Guardian also covered the story, but failed to credit Jon as the original source (the journalist who wrote the piece did originally credit Jon, but the sub-editors cut it).

The main criticism is that the project is a waste of money and will fail to find an audience (not insignificant criticism). The company behind Citzalia has duly responded on their blog (though they appear to be moderating comments quite strictly – I’m still waiting for a critical comment I posted last week to be approved).

EDIT: They’ve now approved my comment, and a whole bunch of other comments much more critical than mine.

Jon has also written a follow-up post here.

Ronny, one of the co-editors here at Bloggingportal Towers, supplied some of the research for Jon’s post. He also did a bit of digging around here (try searching for “European Service Network” – the name of the company behind Citzalia). Ronny discovered that the ESN has received contracts worth:

• Almost 16 million euros in 2009
• Almost 14 million euros in 2008
• Over 5 million euros in 2007

We should point out that these figures are inflated because certain contracts had several contractors mentioned – and it’s not clear that if a company receives an EU contract they will actually be paid the full sum quoted. Regardless, if you add the European Parliament’s money (the above figures are only Commission contracts), the ESN are making a pretty good business from what they do for the institutions.

I’ve no doubt that the ESN does very good work, nor that they’re a skilled and competent company – but wouldn’t this money have been better spent (as Jon argues) aiding real democracy instead of promoting pretend democracy in a virtual world? Maybe the (real) European Citizens’ Initiative represents too much of a Pandora’s box, so the institutions have decided to distract us with computer games and virtual reality.

The UK’s most popular eurosceptic blogger, Richard “Slaughter ‘em” North, also wrote about the Citzalia story. He believes stories like this are a symptom of the dying days of the EU, and warns us that the “indigenous” (i.e. white) population of Europe has been “abused and ignored by the politicians” and that the “backlash will make the BNP [ED: are they far-left or far-right?] look like moderates and Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech sound like a description of a Sunday school outing.”

Meanwhile, the 1848 blog reminds us that:

In the past week, we have learnt that French President Sarkozy announced he is to destroy 300 Roma encampments and expel Roma from French territory, that Germany said it wants to expel 12,000 Gypsies, including 6,000 children and adolescents back to Kosovo, that Sweden in violation of domestic and EU law is deporting Roma for begging, that Copenhagen has asked the Danish government for assistance including the use of force to expel Roma, and that a caravan of 700 travellers were chased out of Flanders.

All this atop the Czech and Slovak practice of automatically sending Roma children to ‘special schools’ for the mentally handicapped, Italy’s 2008 declaration of a state of emergency due to the presence of Roma that saw the eviction of thousands of them, mainly to Romania and Bulgaria, and the murder last year of eight Roma in Hungary by individuals linked to the country’s far-right.

With the far-right (and far-left) on the rise across Europe, the EU certainly needs the support of its citizens right now. However, no amount invested in public relations is going to turn the tide. Effective democratic instruments (like a functioning and understandable European Citizens’ Initiative) would be a far better way for the EU to spend our money.

Image Credits: CC Flickr / BY-NC-2.0 – gnackgnackgnack

CC / Flickr - BY-NC-SA (Matthew Field)

THIS HAS been, without doubt, one of the busiest weeks we’ve ever had here at Bloggingportal towers. There have been so many great conversations going on in the blogosphere that the Editor-in-Chief has been reduced to a gibbering wreck trying to get us to cover them all. Firstly, let’s congratulate the European Parliament’s web team over at Writing for (y)EU – the winners of last week’s Readers’ Poll!

Here are the poll results in all their controversial glory:

The Top 5 Euroblogs (Readers’ Choice)

1. Writing for (y)EU

2. Treffpunkt Europa

3. Lobby Planet

4. Nosemonkey’s EUtopia

5. Jon Worth’s Euroblog

Treffpunkt Europa, after winning 2nd place, has temporarily broken down (could it be the sabotage of jealous rivals?) – but they thank everyone who voted for them. Lobby Planet has posted a thoughtful criticism of the poll (personally, I suspect the Rhino of sabotaging Treffpunkt) reminding everyone that euroblogging should not become egoblogging. Jon Worth is (after 5 years of euroblogging) the 5th best euroblog in the eyes of everybody (except, of course, those of us that would put him higher).

I’VE BEEN following European / EU blogging since 2008, and watching the blogs and tweets this last week has been like watching a crowd of Europeans talking politics. Spurred on by the report into the EU blogosphere last week (which Waggener Edstrom have since abandoned), bloggers, twitterers and commenters are conversing, debating, and even meeting each other in real life.

When the European Parliament closes for summer recess, the blogosphere always tends to indulge in a spot of navel-gazing (The European Citizen calls it “theology season“). Last year, we were talking about European identity. This year – it’s the fundamental challenges for Euroblogging; how are we going to get more people interested in Europe? Is specialisation the answer? Or is it time for a European group blog?

It might seem like we’re all being horribly self-indulgent by having this conversation, but there’s a reason we’re talking about this now. After the news that Charlemagne and Julien Frisch were quiting, we’re now losing another prominent euroblogger in Tony Barber – who writes the Financial Times’ Brussels Blog. He leaves us with this warning:

“The EU really must do something about the so-called “democratic deficit” – the alarming gap between the EU institutions and European citizens.  This problem is, quite frankly, reaching embarrassing proportions.”

Some of the oldest Euroblogs are closing down, and we need to attract new blood to replace them. There is an exciting proposal (originally an idea of the French blogosphere) to create a group-blog for Europeans – but not everyone agrees. An alternative (or complimentary) option is to add extra features to Bloggingportal (to turn it into a “social network” – a Bloggingportal 2.0). To this suggestion, I can only say – “Yes, please!”

Bloggingportal is a volunteer network, and we need all the help we can get. If you are interested in seeing a Bloggingportal 2.0 – and especially if you have any technical skills – we could really use your help. We are always open to suggestions on how we could improve the portal, so send us an e-mail.

THE BLOGOSPHERE has been buzzing with other news as well, of course. Next week, we’re going to be less self-indulgent and focus more on what’s going on in Europe (we promise). We’ve had some excellent examples this week of how the internet can affect European politics by explaining how much MEPs earn or how they vote, improving transparency, fighting censorship and holding mainstream media to account. The blogosphere also let’s us share personal stories, letting others know what Europe really means to us, or question just what the EU is actually for.

The growing EU blogosphere helps all these things happen. That’s why we spend so much time debating and arguing about it – because we want it to thrive and succeed. If you’re thinking of starting up your own blog about European affairs, you’ll find a community of Eurobloggers already here and ready to discuss the week’s news with you.

Let’s give the last word to newcomer Johhny Erasmus, who’s been “struck by how thriving and lively the EU blogging scene is.”

Glad you like it, Johhny!

THIS WEEK the eurosphere has been particularly self-obsessed. It’s not our fault, though! A big-shot PR firm came rolling into town and released a ranking of the top euroblogs. There then followed a furious, self-indulgent debate across the blogosphere (and twittersphere – hashtag: #bbs10) about the report.

I was particularly critical of the report – but there were also posts by Jon Worth, Blogactiv, Mathew Lowry, Open Europe, The European Citizen, Bit More Complicated, Lacomeuropeenne (FR), Ralf Grahn, and many more. Much of the coverage was critical - focusing on the fact that the report imported a methodology designed for the US blogosphere and excluded all non-English EU blogs.

UPDATE: Ralf Grahn has (as usual) provided an excellent and comprehensive round-up of the entire Waggener Edstrom debate in the eurosphere.

We conducted our own quick poll this week. The results were (unfortunately) completely inconclusive – everybody liked different blogs! This says a lot about the health of the EU blogosphere if no two Bloggingportal editors had the same list of top blogs. Three blogs, however, did manage to tie for first place (in no particular order):

(1st place – Editors’ Choice) L’Europe en Blogs

(1st place - Editors’ Choice) Grahnlaw

(1st place- Editors’ Choice) Writing for (y)EU

Well done to all of them! I’ve collected the rest of the blogs nominated by our editors in a poll below – so please vote for your 5 favourite! Next Sunday, we’ll announce the results of the Readers’ choice.

THE CLOAK AND DAGGER POLITICS OF MEPS

Christian Engström, a Swedish Pirate Party MEP, has blogged about walking out of an ACTA meeting (concerning a controversial piece of legislation on intellectual property rights) because he was told the contents of the meeting were to be hidden from the public. I’ve given up waiting for the minutes of the SWIFT meeting (concerning anti-terrorism legislation) to ever be released – likewise with the EAS meeting minutes (about the new EU diplomatic corps). Not that committee minutes would be particularly exciting – but the fact that MEPs won’t release them (and that none of these meetings were broadcast by webcam) highlights the opaque nature of European Parliamentary politics when anything controversial is at stake.

These secretive committee meetings (ACTA, SWIFT and the EAS) come at the same time as a report by Danish MEP and former journalist Morten Lokkegaard, who tells us that “access to information for citizens and communication between policy-makers and voters are central elements” to democracy. British MEP Mary Honeyball writes that “many [MEPs] are desperate for our, i.e. EU and Euro Parl, news to become mainstream and raised out of its current Euro ghetto.” If that’s the case, perhaps you could start by webcasting all committee meetings – not just the uncontroversial ones.

BETTER KNOW A EUROBLOG (#BKAEB)

In honour of @mteu’s suggestion for a #followfriday for euroblogs – this week’s #BKAEB is James Stevens, an EU native in D.C. working for PR firm Fleishman-Hillard. He promises to offer us an insight into US politics from an EU-perspective – and tells us that Washington isn’t always doing things bigger and better: “Brussels could do with some of Washington and Washington could do with some of Brussels.”

MULTI-LINGUAL FILM COMPETITION

Can you speak more than one language? Do you own a camera? Can you make a multi-lingual swords-and-sandals  epic about the history of Rome starring sock-puppets? If you satisfy two out of those three criteria – then consider applying for Global Voices’ European multilingualism video competition.

Image credit: CC / Flickr – BY-NC-SA (kevinthoule)

Picture: pelegon // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

What a week this was: The heat that has reigned almost all across Europe also found its way into European politics, leaving us eurobloggers and our political representatives with red faces and drenched in sweat.

First, a UFO landed in Strasbourg and it was so loud that nobody was able to hear a French MEP talk about aquaculture.

Rumours that the aliens came for the Sauvons l’Europe garden party have not been confirmed so far; insiders tell that they rather were passing by to talk to the new German president who had travelled to Strasbourg to get a history lesson from the Eurogoblin, another alien-like creature of unknown European origin.

The Eurogoblin’s lesson already ranged from the old Romans to French literature in the 19th century, but it was subsequently complemented by The Merchant of Venice with philosophical and historical reflections from the 18th and 19th century on democracy in Europe.

The German president was impressed, we are told. And so were the aliens!

Then, people suddenly started talking about the economy. Doubts over the legality of the eurozone bailout here, 10 measures for growth in Europe there. Only the British tabloids didn’t get it, but that’s not too surprising, is it?

Yet even for this problem euroblogs weren’t lacking solutions: To counter the misinformed British media, the EU needs to communicate more concretely about what it does, and the European Parliament has moved ahead boldly with its Facebook presence.

Other think that it is maybe time to create a collective European blog to move beyond the piecemeal approaches of talking about Europe. But then, aren’t there already collective blogs on EU and European affairs? And isn’t it maybe enough to just vote for the Pirates…!?

On more serious note, a Belarussian blogger saw Commissioner Füle in Minsk, a US-American blogger made us discover the situation on the EU’s external borders as seen by FRONTEX, and Martin Westlake seemed to be quite angry that his European Economic and Social Committee  (he’s the secretary general) doesn’t get more money although it is expected to do more work.

So the heat was on in Europe during the last week – but now it’s time to leave the European blogosphere and to prepare for more heat in the long awaited World Cup final, a match of two European kingdoms that is a proof that we Europeans still love conflict and good old aristocracies, despite decades of so-called “integration”. In other words: OLÉ OLÉ!!

Julien Frisch and Charlemagne; without doubt, two of the best-read blogs in the Eurosphere today. Yet, at the height of their game, both men threw in their respective towels this week – Charlemagne is moving town and Julien has committed digital suicide. It’s a blow for those of us who enjoyed reading their regular insights into European politics.

CHARLEMAGNE

It’s an open secret that “Charlemagne” was the pseudonym of British columnist David Rennie – the son of Sir John Oglivy Rennie, the sixth Director of MI6 (a fact bound to excite the tin-foil hat brigade – and, no, the son arrested for “alleged involvement in the importation of large quantities of heroin from Hong Kong” mentioned in Sir Rennie’s Wikipedia entry was not Charlemagne).

Rennie began Charlemagne’s Notebook in February 2009 to compliment his regular column in The Economist. In his first post, he mused on the intricacies of writing under a pseudonym:

AT A European Union summit not long ago, a visiting reporter from Poland saw “The Economist” on my press accreditation, and asked: “Oh, are you Charlemagne?” When I nodded, and said that I did write that column, her face fell.

“You should be taller,” she said, with feeling. She paused, then blushed at the oddity of her complaint. But the damage was done: she had so clearly spoken with the candour of spontaneous disappointment.

After writing eloquently beneath the mask of Charlemagne since 2007, Rennie is now saying goodbye to Brussels and swapping secret identities – he will henceforth be known as Bagehot and will write exclusively on UK politics. Rennie will be sorely missed by EU geeks… though with the ever-so-slightly-less-majestic visage of Walter Bagehot, his physical stature will hopefully stop disappointing fans in the flesh. Regardless of Rennie’s actual height, the new Charlemagne will have some big clogs to fill…

JULIEN FRISCH

I met Julien Frisch (not his real name) in Rotterdam in 2009 for the finale of the Think About It European blogging competition. He was so concerned with protecting his secret identity that he wore a Groucho Marx-esque false-moustache-and-glasses combo on the discussion panel he was chairing (about 1:00 into this video – after a rather embarrassing question from me). He only gave video interviews with the camera pointed away from him – though he was happy to have his voice heard (and even took part in a short-lived series of EU podcasts).

Julien has given his own reasons for giving up blogging – you can read his interview with Toute l’Europe here (in French – Google translation here). However, from what I know about Julien, the lengths he took to avoid having his identity exposed were about more than just his editorial independence or “protecting his sources.” I also got the impression that he was deeply uncomfortable with any sort of fame or renown. One of the earliest posts of his that I read talked about the disquiet he felt when people cited him outside of the EU blogging circus. He had threatened to give up blogging before – partly because others were trying to turn him into an EU geek celebrity.

Like Charlemagne, Julien had become a fixture of the EU blogosphere. His output was simply phenomenal – fueled by his secret met-amphetamine addiction passion for EU politics, he would post almost daily for two solid years. He was a generous blogger – citing his sources and linking to other blogs – but he was also critical of the institutions he wrote about (no unquestioning EU-phile, he). I wonder if the attention he was getting was simply making him too uncomfortable with the role he had assumed.

In Nosemonkey’s 2008 directory of EU blogs, when Julien was just starting out, he had this honourable mention as a small blog of note:

Only launched in July 2008, even in its first few weeks this blog managed to attract attention for its frequent, eclectic and insightful posts on all things EU-related. If the same rate of posting is kept up, it could soon become one of the big boys…

Guess what? He kept up the same rate of eclectic and insightful posting. Julien: you will be missed. We look forward to hearing from you soon in your post-Julien Frisch incarnation.

IN OTHER NEWS

Nosemonkey helps bust another preposterous euromyth – this one that the EU was planning to ban selling eggs by the dozen. Also read the follow-up here (in which Nosemonkey contacted the British Food Standards Agency for a statement). It’s also worth reading Richard North’s thoughts about the issue on the virulently eurosceptic EU referendum blog. North, a dyed-in-the-wool eurosceptic, argues that these “euro-sillies” should be ignored by all true sceptics:

They always were a red herring, though – a distraction. The danger of the EU was and is far more grievous than bent bananas and cucumbers.

I just wish other eurosceptics would follow North’s advice and stop jumping on every “euro-silly” that rears its ugly head without doing their homework first.

TWO PSEUDONYMS DIE, ANOTHER IS BORN

If you’re feeling miserable after saying goodbye to Julien Frisch and Charlemagne, then the Ooh, Brussels! blog – written by “Johnny Erasmus” – might cheer you up. It’s all about “making Europe sexy” – but the author also isn’t afraid to criticise the sexy EU. We look forward to reading more.

The last week started with a look behind the scenes of EU lobbying, showing how food industry lobbyists told Members of the European Parliament how to vote – and in the end MEPs did so regarding the traffic light label (i.e. rejected it). In the meantime, we have SWIFT again. Both topics raise the big question: What is going on in the European Parliament?

Other bloggers remarked the tied hands of Angela Merkel, the stuttering Barroso and the theoretical powers of the European Council president. And a Mr Delors (he must have been important, I guess) gave an interview.

On a more substantive basis, it was also the economy, stupid! Some prefer Europe 2020 over a European economic government, while others (like our big friend Mr S. from France) don’t want anything, at least no sanctions against EU countries. Which he didn’t say at the EPP summit because he doesn’t go there.

And, as every week, there were also the obligatory looks at (EU) communication: From fried Nutella (or so ) in Italy, sad eurosceptics in Britain to a motivational video, link journalism in the EP and an analysis of the types of EU-geek Twitter users.

Oh yes, and don’t forget to say “No!” to a French Wallonie!!!