I count a pretty senior UKIP person as a friend. Yet whenever I tell that to some liberal lefty pro-EU contacts of mine they are repulsed and perplexed. They assume the person in question must be a Paul Nuttall or Roger Helmer, someone so hopelessly dim, racist or inconsistent that they cannot […]
My earlier post about immigration in the UK and Labour’s response to it prompted this reply from Rob Ford at the University of Manchester: At one level this is right – my post does not propose any reform of immigration rules as part of the solution. But this then started […]
[UPDATE 9.12.2016, 1515] Guy Verhofstadt has given some more detail about how important this associate citizenship thing is to him – see The Independent. However all the main issues with it I outline below still stand! There has been quite some heated reaction to Guy Verhofstadt saying he backs the […]
Back on Sunday I wrote this tweet about François Fillon winning the first round of the centre right primary in France: Then, out of the blue and without asking me anything, four days later I get this: “unabashedly anti-Catholic” Karnitschnig says some Greens are (as if I, one member with […]
“So what does Brexit mean?” “It means Britain will leave the EU.” “Is that it?” “Essentially yes. The referendum asked the British people whether they wanted to Remain in the EU or Leave the EU. A majority said they wanted to Leave.” (have a look at the ballot paper here) […]
The European Union has been trying to get rid of roaming charges for mobile phones for years, first for calls and for SMS, and then subsequently for data. One aspect of it is a so called “Fair Use Policy” – i.e. under what terms I can continue to use my […]
“Was it really a year since the last one?” you’re perhaps asking yourselves. Yes, just as Brussels eases itself back to work after the summer break, Jean Claude pops up to tell everyone why everything is going swimmingly (or not) depending on your point of view. This year Juncker’s State […]
2017 is election year in France. Le Pen is stealing votes from the traditional republican right and Nicolas Sarkozy, never one to shy away from stealing ideas to the right of him, thinks that he’s on to something to promise to tear up the Le Touquet agreement between the UK […]
Brexit, and the economic and political consequences of it, is serious. So why then has the UK appointed its least serious front line politician, Boris Johnson, as its Foreign Minister? (backed up by the little better Davis, Fox and Leadsom) That’s the question that politicians and journalists across the EU […]
Oh TTIP. That great hope to rescue the transatlantic alliance. Or that scary fear of deregulation. Or both. Or neither? Juncker is worried, apparently. The Commission is putting pressure on the USA, supposedly. New Austrian President Van Der Bellen says he is against it. Merkel and Obama say they are […]
So Austria does not have a right wing populist President. Alexander Van Der Bellen defeated Norbert Hofer by 31000 votes, or 50.3% to 49.7% – summary of the result from Der Standard here. But that was too close for comfort. It’s also not enough to point out that Van Der […]
On 10th May at 1030 CET I am giving a lecture entitled “EU or Großdeutschland: the German influence in the European Union” at the Europe2Day Forum at the University of Trieste campus in Gorizia. This a bit different to my usual lectures about online communications in the European Union, but […]