(Part 1 of this remembrance story explaining the background can be found here. This blog entry recounts the trip.) The train from Kortrijk to Poperinge rumbles its way through little villages and across the potato fields and pastures of West Flanders. Past the obligatory Frituur beside each small station. Cows munch […]
(Part 2 of this remembrance story about the trip itself can be found here. This blog entry explains the background.) This coming Sunday I will travel from my home in Berlin to West Flanders in Belgium for a very special and personal act of remembrance. I will meet my parents […]
Timothy Garton Ash, in a column for The Guardian about the task facing Macron after his election on Sunday, sums up the new French President’s challenges in the EU thus: it’s great that Macron also wants to reform the EU, but that’s not in his gift. With Brexit talks already […]
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: [tweet id=”803884593510223872″] At one level this is right – my post does not propose any reform of immigration rules as part of the solution. But this […]
Back on Sunday I wrote this tweet about François Fillon winning the first round of the centre right primary in France: [tweet 800444200089042944] Then, out of the blue and without asking me anything, four days later I get this: [tweet 801744792195633152 hide_thread=’false’] “unabashedly anti-Catholic” Karnitschnig says some Greens are (as […]
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 […]
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 […]
People who work in European Union politics in some way often bemoan the EU’s communications problem. Their classic diagnosis goes something like this: If only people would search out the facts about the European Union, people would better understand that the European Union does work in their interests, and that […]
Matteo Renzi has an idea: train Eurocrats in Italy, as a way to boost Italy’s influence in the EU. Possibly a good idea. He wants that place to be Santo Stefano. That’s a really bad idea. Yes, nearby Ventotene was where Altiero Spinelli was imprisoned, and where he penned the […]