URL: Latest posts
Resource Efficiency flagship launches tomorrow
The European Commission’s President José Manuel Barroso will launch the Flagship Initiative on resource efficiency tomorrow. As mentioned in my previous post, this should start to spell out what the Commission intends to do to address the chal...
The EU2020 Resource Efficiency Flagship Initiative – what is it?
At the start of March, the Commission published its new EU 2020 strategy, “A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”, which included a commitment to “Sustainable growth – promoting a more resource efficient, greener...
A quick catch-up
I’m sorry about the months of silence on this blog – things have just been too busy, and I didn’t seem to be able to make the time to post. However, I’m hoping to change that now & post more regularly! Here’s a few r...
Measuring Europe’s resource use – a briefing and conference
We live in a finite world, and global use of natural resources – land, water, materials – continues to increase, as does our emissions of global warming gases. Yet the EU doesn’t consider resource use in its policymaking – it...
Changing our culture to achieve sustainability…..
The Worldwatch institute have just released a fascinating – and lengthy – publication on ‘Transforming Cultures’ as part of their ‘State of the World’ series. It covers a wide range of issues, from the environmenta...
Commission nominees give written responses to Parliament’s questions
Next week in Brussels the European Parliament’s committees will be cross-examining the nominees for the new Commission – the timetable is here. The Parliament has sent written questions to the nominees already, and has now published their...
Interesting post on different approaches to foreign affairs between Commission and governments
The ‘Charlemagne’ blog from the Economist has an interesting post discussing what he learnt from his contacts as he wrote an article about the new EU representative for foreign affairs, who heads up the new External Action Service (EAS),...
A twitter feed too….
One of the problems I’ve found with blogging is that I often see interesting articles, but don’t get around to creating a blog post. I’m now trying out Twitter as a way of dealing with this problem. On the web page of this blog (but...
The 20-30-40% issue and some Copenhagen blogs….
I’m not at Copenhagen, and I don’t work directly on climate (though of course much of what I do is closely linked to climate). However, it’s a bit strange to have an EU Environment blog without mentioning Copenhagen! One key EU ques...
Barroso outlines responsibilities of Commissioners-designate
European Commission President Barroso has sent letters to all the people he has nominated as Commissioners, outlining his view of their priorities. All the letters are available on the Commission web site here. (I got this link from the excellent END...
“Other worlds are possible” – a new book on climate, development and growth
New Economics Foundation has published a new book, “Other Worlds are Possible”, which contains a set of essays on climate change, development & growth. It features contributions from Dr Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-win...
Some challenges for the new Environment Commissioner (updated)
So, Commission President Barroso has nominated his new Commission, and moved around some roles. Given the name of this blog, clearly the Environment Commissioner is particularly important, and President Barroso has nominated the current Slovenian DG...
Some important changes in the new Commission
Following on from the previous post, Barroso has made a number of changes to the division of responsibilities in the new Commission – here’s some notable changes: A new DG Climate Action has been created, made up of the climate section of...
The new (nominees) for the European Commission
President Barroso has announced his new commission (who will be subject to approval by the European Parliament). The Commissioner-designate for the Environment is Janez Potocnik (Slovenia), who was Commissioner for Research in the last Commission, th...
An elected EU President?
So, last week the new European Council President was selected, after lots of secret discussions between the EU member state governments, and with the European Parliament and Barrosso having their inputs too. There has been a lot of criticism of the s...
Understanding all the different European ‘Councils’
The blogger nosemonkey has posted a nice clear summary to try to clear up the confusion many people have between: The European Council, the Council of the European Union, the Council of Ministers and the Council of Europe: http://www.jcm.org.uk/blog/...
Welcome pack for Environment Committee MEPs, briefing documents on climate policy
The Institute for European Environmental Policy’s (IEEP) latest newsletter is full of interesting stuff, including links to a couple of projects involving training MEPs, and stories on EU land use, sustainable development indicators & promo...
The BBC’s new man in Brussels – Gavin Hewitt – starts his blog
Gavin Hewitt, the BBC’s new man in Brussels, has started blogging on his new job. He points out the contrast with his last big assignment – the Obama campaign: For all that, as I set out as Europe editor, I detect uncertainty. Last year,...
Barroso wins the Parliament’s vote – though without great enthusiasm
The European Parliament has today voted for Barroso to be the Commission president – 382 MEPs voted for him, 219 against and 117 abstained – which was enough to give him the job, but clearly also shows a considerable level of opposition,...
Barroso approaches his big Parliament vote tomorrow
Tomorrow (Wednesday 16th) the European Parliament will vote on whether to give the Commission president José Manuel Barroso a second term. EU governments have already supported him, but some political groups in the Parliament – notably the Gre...
