What did the Belgian daily De Standaard write when the Treaty of Rome was adopted?

This could be something important…

And another classic EU quote:

there are two categories of countries: the small ones and the ones that do not realise that they are small (Max Kohstamm)

Let’s start with the EU foreign policy basics.

Other continents play chess, the EU plays ping pong…

… working without strategy has its merits but time is changing and it does not work anymore…

EU integration can then be defined as a “method of not having a strategy”

About the EEAS:

It looks like a Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is organised as a MFA, it works like a MFA but it is not called MFA? Well, it is still a MFA!

The future:

Did we learn the lessons to deal with “future Afghanistans”?

Enlargement has been one of the most defining characteristics of EU integration:

Enlargement a EU foreign policy tool?  No: enlargement is enlargement.  Foreign policy is foreign policy.

But remember:

EU enlargement can also happen by splitting up member states….

So, what is the European Union?

A super-Switzerland

EU geek fact of the day:

There are 19 references to the UN in the EU Treaties.

A universal quote for every decision maker:

I fully understand that political decisions are time consuming, but…

EU in 2010:

It has been a very bad year for the European Community: it was totally replaced by the European Union

If you need a good name for a committee you are about to set up what about:

EGFA = Expert Group for Further Action

Some quotes by José Manuel Barroso (the keynote speaker) who  does not like “the intellectual glamor of pessimism”:

this academic conference reminds me of the time when I still had the time for reflection.

EU is not a federal state. Comparisons with federal states will be disappointing. Good results if compared to international organisations  or other regions regions

We are a non-imperial empire.

Realists are wrong most of the time. Realism is the closest thing to cynicism.

If Europe does not get more united it gets more dis-united.

Foreign policy starts at home.

I quote the Lisbon treaty because I believe that the Member States have read it before they signed it…

The EU interest is more than the sum of the national interests.

The Top 10 Craziest Things Ever Said During a U.N. Speech

David Mitchell:

If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn’t have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap.

Richard Laming

It is ironic that the people who complain most about the complexity of the treaty are the very same people who would complain if it was simple,…

Vaclav Klaus

The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it’s so far that it can’t be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that.

Silvio Berlusconi

“I’m doing what I do with a sense of sacrifice. I don’t really like it. Not at all,” (…) “Very often there is a lot of dirty dealing; there is really the gutter press, worse than that, the shameless and sickly. It’s a difficult life to be responsible for leading the government in a country like Italy.”

“I never made any gaffes, not even one, every gaffe is invented by the newspapers.”

American official (asked about Cameron’s ECR group in the EP)

I do not see any upsides in the new grouping. I can only see downsides. In life it is normally best to do things when they have an upside.

Some highlights: The Independent writes about the brutal truth about America’s healthcare (which is indeed a shocking article!). Dave gives a really good overview on the debate on Gulf Stream Blues here and here. Garbo writes about Hannan’s celebrity exposure in the US. Nosemonkey looks at the numbers. ISN analyses the paranoid populism.  EUoplocephalus explains why we tend to blog and write about it.  And an entertaining  Daily Mash post can be found here.

To be honest: I don’t know enough about health care (nor do I have the time and motivation to dig into it…) to add something substantial to the debate.  My personal experience of health care systems is rather limited. At the moment I am  insured with the NHS, before I had been insured in the German system.  (Last week I actually had to pay for a dentist visit in Germany as the NHS does not cover this.  First time ever I had to pay something health related… Typical example for the “European” health policy I suppose, but that is a topic for another blog post…)

Coming back to the Obama – Republicans – Dan Hannan – NHS – twitter – UK politics health thing. It is interesting that neither the US nor the UK debate looks beyond national borders in a constructive way.  The US media tends to look for bad examples abroad (although the NHS does not seem to be the best example there…) and the UK the media seems to ignore foreign  health care systems. Same is true in Germany: health care reform is a constant topic in the political debate but examples from other countries are absent.  David explains very well in this post that Obama’s proposals are actually similar to the German health care system – and not to the UK system, which is totally ignored in the US (and in the UK and Germany).

This reminded me about an excellent PBS documentary I watched last year which compares different approaches to health care from around the world. The question (not only for the US but also for Europe) is: What can we learn from other health care systems around the world? And how can we make the systems better? So if you are interested in the current (and future) health care debate I recommend you to watch this excellent Frontline programme:

Leaving aside the fact that it is probably not used and valued at its full capacity, the Calendar is a great service, offering access to information on EU affairs, agendas of the EU institutions, schedules of legislative debates, activities and events related to the EU. Moreover, it is quite an attractive, user-friendly tool, that can come in very handy when monitoring EU affairs, as you can search the information by topic, by institution or by date. Its added value rests in the fact that it brings together all these bits and pieces of information, otherwise scattered on the Europa server. That being its main goal, one would imagine that such an instrument would feature very visibly on the EU website, being mentioned quite a few times, if not on the main policy areas pages. Well, it seems that is not exactly the case, as we are facing yet another example of the series: “Let’s make EU transparent…but can we keep this secret?”

It almost seems as if the EU’communication policy is governed by a set of rules that, instead of increasing the efficiency, make it completely counterproductive. Here are a few of them, as they apply to the EU calendar case:

1. Create a useful tool that can actually shed light on what the EU is doing and make it easier for people (journalists, academics, lobbyists, etc) to follow;

2. Try (hard) not to make it visible on the main website (www.europa.eu); that hard that even if its URL is http://europa.eu/eucalendar/, it cannot be reached from the front page;

3. Try (harder) not to link it on any other page where its use could be relevant. After all, if people are so determined to find out what you are doing, they will do their best to find it;

4. (follow up of rule 3) Avoid at any cost any reference to the tool, within or outside Europa.eu. We already have enough banners and initiatives and we don’t want people to get confused.

5. Do not even think of a public launch event. People might actually find out about it and start using it. Keep it “low key”, otherwise we are again accused of propaganda and we definitely don’t want that.

It seems the EU still can’t figure out what types of information and what services are the most suitable (and necessary) to disseminate its policies. That is quite a pity, as some very good initiatives, such as the EU Calendar, become “hidden gems” instead of reference tools, a well-deserved price for those either connected to the designer or stubborn enough to spend hours searching for it.

I hope you will enjoy Kosmopolito!

Stay tuned!

Obviously, this is a more than incomplete list, but for me a good task to get into blogging mood again after a long summer break… So what can you expect in the coming months? This blog will hopefully get a new design and a new domain, a new exciting blogging portal will be launched and I will start a new job.

Oh yes, and a few interesting posts maybe. So stay tuned!

I must admit I don’t like the new extension. It somewhat changes and thus destroys the whole structure and architectural concept of the original tower design. What is your opinion?

http://www.serero.com/projects/eiffel/text/eiffel_notes_en.htm

Update: The architects posted a clarification on their website:  “Our project for a the temporary extension of the Eiffel tower is an unsolicited proposal to the Eiffel Tower management company. We are confirming that the SETE did not organized a competition on this topic, in contrary with what was announced in the press.” (read more here)

www.netvibes.com/kosmopolit

Check it out! I haven’t really decided what to do with it, so maybe it is a good idea to check the ‘universe’ in a few days again! I already have some ideas, so stay tuned! Originally I wanted to post my blogroll in one of the tabs but somehow it was not working…

At the moment you find everything you need to know about Kosmopolit (blogposts, comments, links, videos,…) as well as a small selection of Euroblogs.

Update 25/01/08: My universe is experiencing some turbulences, somehow it must have disappeared in a wormhole… hope it is coming back soon!

Update 26/01/08: The “forbidden universe” is still there…. hope the netvibes team is able to solve it soon…

Update 27/01/08: Still not working….

Update 28/01/08: It is up and running!!! Thank you, netvibes!

and more procrastination (update 13/5/2008):

And I must admit, some of the facts about the Kosmopolit typewriter could also be said for this blog (except the thing about the English insurance office). I also would never call my writing clear and beautiful … well, for the time being, I just hope I will not end up producing pencil sharpeners… But please read the facts:

The Kosmopolit found only a limited market, but where it was used, it was prized for its sturdiness and for its beautiful, clear typing. It was exported to several European countries, and according to Ernst Martin, it was still used for years after the turn of the century, especially in English insurance offices, to prepare “beautiful” documents. Manufacture must have stopped around 1902-1903, for the last advertisements for the Kosmopolit date from 1903. The Kosmopolit was the last typewriter produced by Guhl & Harbeck; the company later produced one more notable item, the Jupiter pencil sharpener.

So, the polls are open, off you go…Thanks for your vote!

And thanks a lot for the nomination! (btw: great category!)

Enjoy!

the mix tape:

Hot Chip “Over and Over”
Richard Ashcroft “Why not nothing”
Muse ” Supermassive Blackhole”
The Vegastones “Drag Queen Eyes”
The Good, The Bad And The Queen “Herculean”
Kasabian “Cut off”
Flaming Lips “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”
Tom McRae “You cut her hair”
The Doves “There goes the fear”
Elbow “Any Day Now”
Interpol “Slow Hands”
James “Getting away with it”
Beulah “Burned By The Sun”
Little Wings “Sand Canyon”
The High Llamas “Showstop Hiphop”

albums:

Jarvis Cocker “Jarvis”
Midlake “The Videos of Van Occupanther”
Kasabian “Empire”
The Go-Betweens “Live in London”
Spiritualized “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space”
Erlend Oye “Unrest”
Grandaddy “Just like the Fambly Cat”
Ian Brown “Solarized”
Simian “We are your friends”
Joo Kraus “Public Jazz Lounge”
E.S.T “Strange Place For Snow”
Engineers “Engineers”

If you think I forgot to include something important, please post a comment!

Even though I highly doubt that this blog will become an inspirational source for many people I decided to share my thoughts with the world out there.