Tag Archives: EU
ACTA Recommendation: Ditch the Crazy Stuff
Here is a short ACTA explanation in “plain English” by Public Knowledge’s Legal Director Harold Feld. Five minutes with Harold Feld – because this stuff is important – and you need to know. Oh, and this is not only a matter for the US, in fact the EU has been quite active in the negotiations [...]
Posted in International Politics Also tagged ACTA, Anti-counterfeiting, Intellectual property, internet governance, trade, USA 1 Comment
Internal decision-making of the European Commission – A quick guide
So you (think you) know everything about how the EU works? Mastered the intricacies of codecision? Ah, so you already know it is not called codecision anymore, but ordinary legislative procedure. Good. So you probably already know about all the changes brought by the Lisbon Treaty. We all do. What, of course, we still don’t [...]
Posted in European Union Also tagged decison-making, European Commission, Institutional, internal, lisbon treaty, procedures 7 Comments
EU geek quiz: What is the Finalisation Written Procedure?
After officially becoming a EU Girl Geek, I decided to give one more try to our (very infrequent) EU geek quiz series. So, digging deeply, for mere academic purposes, into the Commission’s internal rules of procedure, as amended in February 2010, I did not have many difficulties in finding some very geeky details. Now, of [...]
Posted in Europe, European Union Also tagged decision-making, EU geek quiz, European Commission, Finalisation Written Procedure, internal rules of procedure 5 Comments
The future of bloggingportal
During the last weeks the editors of bloggingportal have been discussing the future of bloggingportal. The attempt to kick-start a public debate on our editors’ blog here failed, partly because we had some server problems last week. So I thought I should give it another plug here. So why do we need to talk about [...]
Simon Hix: The State of European Democracy After Lisbon
Simon Hix on The State of European Democracy After Lisbon at the IIEA – The Institute of International and European Affairs.
Posted in European Debate, European Union Also tagged democracy, democratic deficit, european democracy, lisbon treaty, simon hix 8 Comments
Belgium takes over. Not.
What will be “sober, plain and simple”? But also “tricky” and “not glamorous”? Estonian Euro coins? No, it is the upcoming Belgian Council presidency – at least this is the characterisation of senior Belgian officials. As we are approaching its start, on July 1st, everyone is eager to hear about the famous presidency priorities. The [...]
Posted in Europe, European Debate, European Union Also tagged Belgian Presidency, Belgium, Council Presidency, trio 6 Comments
Brussels and the EU institutions. How it all began.
Fact: Brussels is the centre of EU activities, the main seat of its institutions. It is enshrined in the Treaties as such. But was it like this from the very beginning? And why was it chosen to play this role? Going down history lane, we find Belgium, one of the founding members of the European [...]
Posted in Brussels, Europe, European Debate, History Also tagged 1958, Belgium, Brussels, EU institutions, presidency 12 Comments
Con/LibDem coalition: A new role for Britain in the EU?
Probably not. To get an idea what the new Conservative/ LibDem coalition is thinking about the EU you just have to read two short documents: Last week an interesting memo leaked from William Hague who is now the new British Foreign Secretary: The Tory letter on Europe in full. There is also a section in [...]
Posted in Europe, European Union Also tagged Britain and the EU, Conservatives, David Cameron, LibDems, Liberal Democrats, Tories, UK, United Kingdom, William Hague 1 Comment
Sunday reading: Why Europe will win
via Newsweek.com European firms beat American rivals. Forget the conventional wisdom. European firms are faster-growing, more profitable, and better at globalization than their American rivals. (…)
Joschka Fischer, die Krise der EU und das Problem aus Karlsruhe