URL: Latest posts
Bulgaria’s recent elections and democratization theory: waning acceptance of the established rules of the game?
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(An earlier version of this commentary was first published on EUROPP: London School of Economics’ blog on European Politics) As so often happens with news from Bulgaria, the results from the recent Bulgarian elections and their results (see her...
E-participation does not necessarily lead to less corruption: Highlights from the Master’s
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With this new series, we aim to present the highlights of promising research conducted by Master’s students at the Institute of Public Administration. As we all know, Master’s theses an range from a simple exercise in independent research...
In memoriam: Margaret Thatcher’s speech in Bruges
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Remembering Margaret Thatcher through her speech in Bruges:“The European Community is one manifestation of that European identity, but it is not the only one.We must never forget that east of the Iron Curtain, people who once enjoyed a full sha...
Pragmatic Optimism: The View from Poland
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As we have done in the last three years, we have been receiving speakers for an Honours class dealing with European affairs. This year’s class was entitled ‘Visions of Europe’ and invited speakers to share their vision for the futur...
The growth and decline of EU legislation over time
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Some of the most persistent myths about European integration concern the questions what and how much does the EU do. While the big decisions taken at inter-governmental conferences get all the media attention, day-to-day policy making remains in...
Did the Dutch foreign minister just invite the Commission to monitor core democratic values in the member states?
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As reported by Bloomberg here, the Dutch foreign minister and his German, Finnish and Danish colleagues have sent a letter to the European Commission’s President Barroso, urging the Commission to develop a mechanism for the EU to be able &...
The EU’s Budget Negotiations and the Dutch Government: A Commentary
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The Dutch government’s mission for last week’s budget negotiations, which had to be secured by Prime Minister Rutte, was three-fold: First, to maintain the 1 billion euro rebate on The Netherlands’ contribution to the EU. Second, to...
Challenges for European regions: social-economic problems and the need for more Europe-wide democracy
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Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Randstad Regio last week in Brussels, the question arose what the future is for European regions. The economic crisis seems to strengthen the tendency towards centralization both in the European Union (for example,...
Europeanization and its discontents
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The generally held view that the smooth functioning of political systems depends on trust has caused much concern about dropping levels of support for the EU political institutions. In his blogpost in December, Dimiter Toshkov showed that trust in th...
The challenge for Dijsselbloem
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Some revealing remarks from Jean-Claude Juncker speaking to the European Parliament (via Niamh Hardiman at Crooked Timber and eurointelligence). The summary at Crooked Timber qualifies his talk as having been extremely critical of the eurogroup’...
Eastern Europeans in the Netherlands: A battle of the numbers or are journalists bad scientists?
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RTL news reported yesterday (link in Dutch) that the PVV, the Freedom Party led by Geert Wilders, have received 40 000 complains on their controversial website asking people to report Central and Eastern European citizens causing ‘problems&...
The European Commission vs. the People
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The Commission has recently published its vision about the future of European integration. The report is more than ambitious calling for full banking, economic, budgetary and political integration, including ‘dedicated fiscal capacity for the e...
A fine example of Euro-speak
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I am sure you have all heard the old adage ‘No taxation without representation”. Here is the translation in Euro-speak: “Further financial mutualisation requires commensurate political integration” (from page 35 of the Commi...
The Politicization of the EU Commission
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Last week the European Parliament has given its backing to Tonio Borg becoming the European commissioner for health. He was put forward by Malta to replace John Dalli, who resigned last month over allegations of fraud. The newly nominated EU commissi...
Budget negotiations and the EU public sphere
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Although the talks on the EU budget ended last Friday without a conclusion, the media coverage on the negotiations does tell us something about the state of the ‘EU public sphere’. When we use media coverage on EU issues as a proxy for the emerge...
Why EU Commissioners Are Poor Politicians
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EU Commissioners might be seasoned bureaucrats but make for lousy politicians. Vivian Redding, currently responsible for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, and Commissioner since 1999 (!) is surely a masterful mandarin, but doesn’t ...
Burgers, nationale politiek en de politisering van de EU
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Caspar van den Berg & Carola van Eijk Gisteren debatteerde de Tweede Kamer over de meerjarenbegroting van de Europese Unie, het Meerjarig Financieel Kader. Misschien nog wel opvallender dan wat in het debat zelf naar voren kwam, was dat het debat...
My first blog on blogging
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I’ve agreed to join my colleagues in cyberspace by becoming a regular contributor to this blog. What seems more appropriate than a first blog contribution on blogging based on recent research? I am involved in the InterEURO project whose main purpo...
Visions on Europe: what is your view on the ‘new’ Europe after the crisis?
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We will starting a new Honours Class at Leiden soon on ‘Visions on Europe‘. What kind of Union do we want? How will the Union look after the current crisis? Will it be a more federal Europe, or one in which nation states still be the domi...
Solve for the equilibrium: Dutch higher education
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A bit off-topic but since we have discussed the topic before, here is a re-post from my personal blog: 1) The number of first-year students in the Netherlands has soared from 105 000 in 2000 to 135 000 in 2011. The 30% increase is a direct result...
