Latest posts
What I would have written for CiF… Being pro-EU in the UK must not just be a proxy for British business in the EU
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[I wrote this piece, unsolicited, for Comment is Free of The Guardian today. They did not want it, so I publish it here instead] Last week on these pages the...
Candidates for President of the European Council
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The European Council elects its President by a qualified majority for a term of two and a half years, renewable once. This means that Herman Van Rompuy, the current incumbent,...
Candidates for High Rep for EU Foreign Policy
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The High Rep is appointed by the European Council, acting by qualified majority. However as the person is also a Vice President of the European Commission, their nomination has to...
Swivel eyed loons, party membership and post democracy
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So Tory Andrew Feldman may or may not have said that some of the party’s members are “swivel-eyed loons”. I am not especially bothered whether he said it or not,...
Best of the rest – candidates for President of the European Commission
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Following my previous posts about likely EPP and PES candidates for President of the European Commission, what about other candidates not from either of the main political forces? With no...
EPP candidates for Commission President
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In a previous post I analysed the likely candidates from the centre left PES for Commission President. Here I examine who the centre right EPP might put forward. It is...
Denmark’s possible EU Patent Court referendum – an opportunity?
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[Please note: this is not a piece about referendums in general, and nor does it call into question my overall position as a referendum-sceptic. It relates to a very specific Danish...
Barroso’s promise of a federal Europe is an insult. The post the College of Europe doesn’t want the Commission to see?
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So someone had the temerity to criticise the über-Eurocrat Barroso on the blog of the Eurocrat school! And then the blog post was removed, without explanation, as pointed out by...
Denmark is where I live. But I think it will never be home.
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It was a normal enough Copenhagen situation; that’s what makes it frustrating. I was introduced to some friends of my partner’s in Copenhagen yesterday evening. Two of them persisted in...
FreeMovement.net – mapping breaches of Schengen
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As any regular reader of this blog knows, non-Schengen compliant border controls (and my documentation of them) have been a regular topic in the last few months. I’ve been checked...
Are reservation fees and private railways killing the allure of Interrail?
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Knowing how much I travel by train some friends have rather flippantly said I would be better booking Interrail tickets for my trips than the individual tickets separately. So with...
PES candidates for Commission President
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Every five years Brussels has a bout of political intrigue. It is the time when a new European Parliament is elected, and connected to that, a new team of European...
Labour’s EU vision in 5 points
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I was at an event in Brussels this week where there was much discussion about Labour trying to find 5 points it could put on a pledge card during the...
UKIP, the Lernaean Hydra of British politics
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In Greek mythology the Lernaean Hydra is a monster with many heads, and every time one head is removed two more grow in its place. So too, it seems, is...
An open letter to Gordon Pattison, Regional Director of East Midlands Labour
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Dear Gordon, I am writing to you to ask some questions about the European Parliament selection process conducted in your region. I have been accused by Jonathan Ashworth MP of...
The Lille Loophole – stop London checks on all except 3 trains
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What is the Lille Loophole? It is a means by which people without the correct identification papers necessary to enter the UK can do so thanks to a loophole in...
Danish Ministries – now all on Twitter (unofficially)
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As I have previously lamented, Danish politics has been slow to take to social media, especially Twitter. So today I present my next step to do something about it… As...
A little Brussels-London security paranoia case study – this coming Friday
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I have not taken Eurostar recently, but judging by comments posted on my previous blog posts about the service, it seems that the security paranoia that afflicts the route has...
An EU-blogger on board Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise
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It has taken a couple of months to get everything in order, but I am now very happy to be able to announce my most unlikely, and most exciting, project...
Online networking: we can shine the light on their malevolence, but we cannot be them
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It has been an interesting week. My posts about Labour’s MEP selections, and the panel member in the East Midlands, Nicki Brooks, who seems to have selected herself, have prompted...
