100 posts
The EU’s media deficit
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The most depressing result from my analysis of media coverage of EU reform is the complete absence of substance and detail in the arguments presented. Politicians and commentators alike seem Continue reading →...
An alternative overarching EU communication strategy?
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At last, an opportunity to blog about gardening and EU comms in the same post. Those who managed to sit through some or all of my Prezicast on the EU online public space would have picked up the fact that my day job involves helping various parts of...
2011: The year the Commission embraced social media
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Anne looks back on 2011's social media achievements in the Commission.
EU Navfor website – tell them what you think of their mission
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When EU institutional comms are not up to scratch I say so – see posts about the EEAS, Citzalia and the Citizens’ Initiative for example. So it’s only fair, in return, when I see a good example of what the European Union is doing to...
Communicating Europe: Reding’s revolution
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How is the European Union responding to public opinion and media trends? Conducted during the triple crisis – financial sector, economy and eurozone - Eurobarometer 73, Public opinion in the European Union (First results) recorded sinking support...
The Commission should be focussing on policies not personalities
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Plans leaked yesterday, which seek to boost the effectiveness of European Commission communications, are a welcome acknowledgement that current EU simply isn’t getting its message across. Indeed the recent Eurobarometer survey showed EU support...
See no citizens, hear no citizens, speak to no citizens – the institutional approach to the European citizens’ initiative (ECI)
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A friend pointed me to the Working Document on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the citizens’ initiative from the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs. Rapporteurs for this...
my history as a Polish
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Having spent 4 years in Brussels I begin to look at Poland with a mix of nostalgia and criticism. Nostalgia is self-explanatory. I spent the first 30 years of my life predominantly in this country; I come from a family where both parents spoke Polish...
Yes, w’ve got an answer!
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Remember? Way back in January the internet editors and webmasters in the European Commission wrote an open letter to their new bosses. Now w’ve got an answer! Enjoy reading the reply by Commissioner Reding. I’ll come back with comments in...
Getting some glamour in our lives
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Well I never! Glamour magazine, from the Condé Nast stable and aimed at the fashion-concious young woman has a piece this month on “The EU in 60 seconds”. Quotes the European Movement, UKIP and Maurice Fraser of the LSE, which seems to...
Twittering the hearings
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Just a short post to draw attention to one of the more interesting aspects of the hearings of commissioners-designate, one which may mark an important change in the way EP political groups communicate. I was fascinated to observe during the seven d...
Reding and Malmström: Urgent & complete redesign of EU Commission website needed
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When the new Barroso II Commission finally is allowed to start working, at least two Commissioners face the urgent task to update the web pages and step up the communication effort of their services. They are Viviane Reding (Justice, Fundamental Righ...
Who are the main players in the EU-twittersphere?
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Edelman have cooked up a little tool called TweetLevel that gives a number that judges an individual’s influence on Twitter. 0 is the minimum score and 100 the maximum. Left Foot Forward has had a go at working out which Labour people have most...
From Dahab to Place St Boniface, from scuba to espresso, how far can you take social media promotion?
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I had an hour between meetings today so called for the first time at Blomqvist’s, a Swedish espresso bar on Place St Boniface in Brussels (no website yet, but FB page is here). It was a cold January morning and the place was rather empty, so wh...
A Year is Good but a Strategy is Better
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We have had just about everything since the first one in 1983: small and medium-sized enterprises, tourism, languages, equal opportunities, intercultural dialogue. I am talking about ‘European Years of…’. The last mentioned – the European Yea...
Better EU communication: European Parliament
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The web pages of the European Parliament are overflowing with material on the hearings of the designated members of the European Commission. Formally, the EP votes on the Commission as a body, but the hearings are conducted with the individuals chose...
Could I talk to the Commissioner, please?!
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Citizen-to-institutions communication still looks like a quasi-impossibility at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and there where it happens you see mixed results - but still results on which basis we can continue working. I have disc...
Intute survey
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Intute has just released a survey about EU sources and online use, which we very much advise you to take. You can visit it here: http://feedback.intute.ac.uk/eu2009/. If you don’t know yet, Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk) is a free online serv...
Recommendation watch: 1. Lisbon Council
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As we approach a new Commission, expect to see a lot of recommendations for them from all and sundry. Rather than add my voice to the cacophony by making up my own, I’ll content myself with picking over everyone else’s, using anything I f...
Raising the level of the debate
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Over on Nosemonkey’s blog, in yet another debate on the pros and cons of EU membership, Insideur is of the opinion that: IMHO there is a real gap in the market, that Open Europe has sought but failed to fill, for serious, informed, and therefor...
The faceless Commission
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Two days ago, three new Commissioners have been approved by the European Parliament, but the Commission saw no reason to announce this on its main website.Since until now there is still no remark regarding this change on the Commission website, it'll...
The Commission does not care for the new Commissioners
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Today, the European Parliament approved three new Commissioners:Algirdas Šemeta for Financial Programming and BudgetPawel Samecki for Regional PolicyKarel de Gucht for Development and Humanitarian AidAs you can see from the links set above, the resp...
praising Poland and Ukraine
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Europe.viewWreath by wreathSep 10th 2009From Economist.comHow east Europe can step over history's long shadowTWO of the five most-commented-on articles on The Economist’s website last week were about east European history. One concerned the icy rel...
Building Communities of Practice with Event-in-a-Box
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Trans-European online Communities of Practice should become a key element in the European online community, but examples so far are few. This post looks at DG INFSO, which has been using online community principles since 2002, two years before the ph...
The light bulb ban rage - just a symptom of the EU communication disaster [updated]
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At the beginning, I just wanted to shortly comment on the latest blog post of EU Commissioner Andris Piebalgs where he defends the coming EU-wide EU light bulb ban - reacting to the rising "rage" all over the Union.I wanted to ask why the Commissione...
There's more
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At the risk of banging on quite a lot about EU propaganda (but there's so much to say!), further to yesterday's post, we reckon that email from the UK Commission office looks pretty embarrassing for EU Communications Commissioner Margot Wallstrom.Jus...
EU Commission officials - coming to a Uni near you
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We have just seen an email that the European Commission would probably have preferred we didn't.Dominic Brett, Head of Public Diplomacy (!) at the European Commission Representation in the UK, has just sent an email out to students and teachers using...
Spin spin spin
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Before disappearing on holiday, EU Communications Commissioner Margot Wallstrom (who, BTW, will have earned more than £2 million in basic salary when her term ends in November, and who will then receive an extra £1.8 million in pension payments and...
The silly season
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So, August is here and summer holidays and a news drought with it! Last week the Swedish think-tank Timbro released a report complaining that “EU information is not neutral”, that we “buy coverage in the media” and that “...
Report: EU Colonizes Civil Society
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A report by the Swedish pro-free markets think-tank Timbro makers some stark claims about the EU communication policy. The report says that: EU makes attempts to colonize civil society and each year substantial financial support to think tanks and o...
Communicating Europe: Mission Impossible? What if the problem was elsewhere…
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On Monday, Forum 311 -an association of young French professionals in Brussels- organised a debate on the theme “Communicating Europe: Mission Impossible?” I couldn’t go. Fortunately, other bloggers attended, and thanks to them I could read two...
Europhobes and Europhiles: a new type of info-war in Plato’s cave [Stergios MAVRIKIS]
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How to sell the idea of the European Union and the Euro elections? Propaganda, PR, Communications Policy….you name it! The Engineering of Consent: the EU case In the age of mass production and mass democracy, there must be a technique of mass...
EuroParliament Tv vs. YouTube (15 days left to the Euroelections June 2009)
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Source : EurActiv [edited] Please see the EuroElections add here : http://www.europarltv.europa.eu/YourVoice.aspx?action=view&PackageId=3aa717a9-86c7-48b6-af0d-3046a364b605 Online broadcaster YouTube and TV channel Euronews launched a new broadca...
Margot Wallström Guest blog post [Margot Wallström]
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Thanks for asking me to be a guest. I find the discussions here interesting and the project itself very worthwhile. Hopefully you do too! It’s the first time the Commission has supported this sort of a competition. With just three weeks...
The “Festival of Europe”: efficient communication or just a colourful marketplace?
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Today it’s the 9th of May, Europe day. Like every year, celebrations are organised, with various intensities, throughout Europe. Of course, the main festivities are held in Brussels, where the European institutions open their doors to the publi...
Young and New Media Conference: Commission has closed itself from journalists [Joeri OUDSHOORN]
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The EuropocketTV organised conference in Pablo de Vallbona (Valencia) opened this morning with a critical debate about the communication of the European Commission. The core message shared by all debaters is that the European Commission is closing it...
European Young Journalist Award
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I’ve been asked to give this a plug - the deadline’s 31st May, the age limit is 17-35, and the prize (of which there is one for every EU member state) is a trip to Berlin in August/September (just in time for the 20th anniversary of the f...
A manifesto for the next European Commissioner for Communication Strategy
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The 2004-2009 Barroso Commission is starting to wind down. Brussels has its eye on the European Elections in June, and the selection of a new Commission due to take office from 1st November. One of the Commissioners for whom I have developed qui...
Debate: European Communication Policy – biased propaganda?
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By: SILKE M. STUMVOLL The European Union should be cooler about its communication efforts. Why don’t let us journalists take care of the communication?” argued a German journalist at the debate “EU communication policy: biased propaganda?”...
Could you wait while I look for my hearing aid?
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Can you Hear Me Europe? Really? That is the best name that MTV could come up with for their European Elections project? As I noted last week, the campaign is initiated by European Commissioner for Communication Margot Wallström and MTV, who met earl...
Can You Hear Me Europe? [Mats SIFFELS]
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MTV has gotten involved in the election campaign. Through television advertisement and an interactive website MTV intends to get their watchers active in the political process, or at least to think a little bit more about what is their future too. Si...
European Parliament elections 2009 (79): Can You Hear Me Europe?
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Looks like the Commission, in co-operation with MTV, is getting something done ahead of the European Parliament elections.A youth campaign under the labelCan You Hear Me Europe?is trying to get the voices of young voters, both in the campaign and on...
EP elections made cool(er)
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With just two more months to go until the European Parliament elections, it seems that the number of initiatives aimed to attract people to vote is growing at a steady pace. Unsurprisingly, following the success of the Obama campaign in the US Presid...
How To Be A "Think Tank"
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Some people get paid astounding amounts of money. Some people get handsome salaries. Whether the...
You want some official info from European Parliament? Wait several weeks, or better forget about it. [Matej HRUSKA]
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EP officials often complain, that people don’t communicate with them (and don’t care about the whole EP). So they’ve made some projects to boost communication up (after all, this is one of them; and Mark Mardell writes about another...
De Staandard compares EU with Latvian poems
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A short episode from today’s DNA conference in Brussels which was an interesting event mixing new web start-ups and established media companies. At a panel with the ‘traditional’ media the question came up whether established media...
The 'Euro-myth'.
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For the uninitiated, a 'euro-myth' is a story, usually in the Eurosceptic press, which is either wholly untrue, a deliberate distortion of the facts, a misunderstanding or taking an individual idea from a working paper and presenting it as a fixed de...
The 10 commandments for efficient Communication with EU citizens
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“Moses calling from Brussels: EUCommunication Policy…nul points” There is no doubt that nation states are the dominant frame of reference and belonging for a vast majority of EU citizens. The question is IF and HOW an additional col...
Taurillon on European communication strategies
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For those able to read French, I'd like to point to an excellent article by Taurillon titled "Pour une communication européenne" ("For a European communication").
Milkshaker.eu is shaking again - and correctly
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After critiques in this blog (including the comments to the post) and the remarks by Brussels Media regarding the unclear profile of the site and the wrong election countdown, milkshaker.eu had been taken of the net (even realised by New Europe).Now...
Milkshaker: EU election website gets election date wrong (updated)
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Brussels has a new website dedicated to the European elections in June 2009.The site is called "milkshaker" and unfortunately it has not only a confusing name but is also confusing in itself, as Julien has already noted.Finally, the makers of the sit...
milkshaker.eu - a strange mix (updated)
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When you put in many things and mix them like milkshaker.eu does, the result might be that the mix does not taste too delicious!In other words: I don't get it.Update (12 February 2009):Tried to reach the page today, but it seems to be offline. Probab...
Analysing Trends: Which European Institutions Get More Attention?
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Which institution gets the most attention on the internet? Using the biggest search engines database, it seems that Commission rules the media attention when we talk about the EU. What is very interesting, that the Eastern and the new member states p...
EU Communications Strategy (Ireland), or, How should the public best be informed about European issues?
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The European Commission plans to spend €1.8 million on a new communications strategy in Ireland, which will be specifically aimed at women, 16-30 year olds and those on lower income. Information about the EU is to be disseminated in several ways, o...
Now, what’s the definition of dialogue?
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Kudos to the EPP group for their new website - DialogueTV. It features a centrally placed, embedded video player and an easy channel-selection feature, allowing one to watch videos sorted into the areas of Climate Change, Demographic Change, A Prospe...
The EU Calendar and the EU’s 5 golden rules to hide useful information
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Anyone interested in European affairs would find it very useful. That is, if they can find it. It is the EU Calendar, a tool that existed for quite a while (without anyone knowing of its existence, thus making it utterly irrelevant) and it was offici...
How many web TV projects does the EU need?
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The EPP has launched today a new web tv project called Dialogue TV. Some comments on the flood of new EU web tv channels.The EPP-ED already has an ambitious web tv project (EPP-ED TV) so why does the EPP add another portal? Dialogue TV is branded as...
€ 2.4 bn propaganda
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This post was first published in TH!NK ABOUT IT site 1st February 2009. EU taxpayers are paying over 2,410 million (€ 2.4 bn) Euros to receive EU propaganda of EU bureaucracy. This amazing figure can be found from recently published study “The...
EUtube watch continues
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It’s been five days and we almost missed the new fun EU Tube video. While it’s no Chemical Party or Romanticism in European Films, it is a well done clip. The challenge this time again is to identify all the film references. Resident film...
Too busy to read blogs about the EU? No longer - bloggingportal.eu
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There are hundreds of blogs about the European Union and EU politics. So how do you make a start reading them? It’s no easy task. But today things just became a whole lot easier with the launch of BloggingPortal.eu - the new and easy way to fol...
Prague in winter dress and the naked truth about EUTube
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At the beginning of every new EU presidency the whole Commission travel to the capital to meet with the Government and discuss the political agenda of the coming six months. Gas and Gaza dominated the discussions. So I spent the last two days in the...
Research on User Perceptions of EU website
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Interesting piece of research on “how online experiences feed back into offline perceptions” in the case of the official europa.eu website which indeed has some potential for improvement regarding content, accessibility, participation and...
The failures of EU democracy
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On why attempts to engage the people in EU politics are going to continue to fail.
Margot Wallström : “Communicating Europe - Mission impossible?”
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Margot Wallström, Vice President of the European Commission Available at: Europa.eu [ edited ] Humboldt Universität zu Berlin - Walter-Hallstein-Institut - Lecture - Forum Constitutionis Europae Berlin, 25th November 2008 Référence: SPEECH/08/64...
The state of EU debate
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A subject worth another look every year or so - especially with EU elections looming in 2009 - is what sort of discussion (if any) the European Union is inspiring among its citizens. After all, I remain top Google result for “EU debate” (...
EU sets communication priorities for 2009
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Euroactiv [moderated, see full article here] The European institutions are close to agreeing on three major subjects that they wish to build on next year to reach out to EU citizens. These are the fight against climate change, the June 2009 European...
The problems of EU debates
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After reading recent posts by Martin Westlake and Julien Frisch I actually remembered a post on “EU debates” that I wrote a couple of months ago but somehow forgot to publish. It is rather an exploratory post, very general and patchy and...
Message to Margot
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There is an easy way for Margot Wallstroem to improve the Communication of the commission with European Citizen.Blogging commissioner Margot Wallstroem is responsible for "Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy" and as such "plays a crit...
Brussel Media Night : From Europe to Brussels, From day to night
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Friday, Cafe Babel and the team of the European Youth media days invite you to the first Brussel Media Night. One night, but so much to do! For 5 euros, the Media Night offers you : to live a unique multimedia experience , to participate to some deba...
Brussel Media Night : From Europe to Brussels, From day to night
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pimg src="/public/bruxelles/Agenda Sophie/.cafebabel-EYMD_Media-Night-web_2__m.jpg" alt="Media Night poster" //p...
More EU “web streaming services”
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In our excitement about Europarl TV, we missed the re-launch of the EPP-ED internet video station at www.epp-ed.tv. It is a slick new platform. As the EPP-ED points out in its press release, “EPP-ED TV first broadcast via the internet in June 2007...
Bridging the EU’s Communication Gap?
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As we all know there are millions and millions of EU citizens out there that feel a deep and distressing sense of emptiness and detachment from the EU legislative machine. Such citizens are just gagging to learn about the enthralling political dealin...
How to explain a political process with a video?
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The brilliant people at Common Craft just released a great video that explains the US elections in ‘plain English’! If you don’t know their other videos (mostly about internet issues) you really missed something and I strongly recom...
Dutch EU project fund remains controversial
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Dutch European Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans this week formally turned down a request to financially support an innovative webTV news project called BrusselVandaag.nl, saying he does not believe such a project can contribute properly to the debat...
EU Council presidency: Slovenia and France – Two media approaches
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Until the end of June, Slovenia held the rotating EU Council presidency. For a news consumer it was easy to register, and during the presidency all the press releases dropped into my e-mail without further trouble. It was then easy to scan each headl...
Council’s website: a symbol for all that’s wrong with the EU?
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Image via Wikipedia Some of us have had a particular bugbear about the Council of Minister’s lack of transparency for some time now. We’ve even taken the time to write irate letters to the FT on the subject (much to the shock of colleague...
Create a Transparent and Connected Democracy
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While Europe is looking for a solution to the Irish No to the Lisbon treaty many say that the lack of transparency and democracy is seen as one of the main problems of the EU.A post by Bente Kalsnes lead me to very interesting proposals by Barack Oba...
Time to steal some ideas from Obama
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Openness and transparency in politics is important. Very important. It gives indications of how legitimate a political system is. It gives us better possibilities to check whether the politicians are doing the job they already promised us they should...
COMMENTARY: The EU is not misunderstood
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It’s too easy to dismiss the no-vote in Ireland as a vote against Europe. It could also be a vote against a European Union that lacks true democratic legitimacy. Yes, the EU is a democracy - there is a parliament we can vote for. But it’s...
EUTube goes from sex to science
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Eureka! EUTubes newest clip is geek-tastic. Even though the European Commission brought us this clip, which we discussed in an earlier post, it is still unexpected that they have shown such agility on EUTube. Even more shocking that they are making...
