Feb

28

Swedish Greens move positive on EU

February 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Swedish Greens’ (Miljöpartiet de Gröna) spokeswoman Maria Wetterstrand has provoced a u-turn of her party’s position on the EU. In a leader in the latest members magazine Grönt, Maria argues that the values for Swedish EU membership are stronger than its criticism. According to an interview she gave to Dagens Nyheter she can no longer [...]

Feb

27

Commissioner Kyprianou to step down and become new Cypriot foreign minister

February 27, 2008 | 1 Comment

Rumours (e.g. Reuters) have it that EU Health Commssioner Markos Kyprianou from Cyprus will return to his home island in the coming days. Apparently the new Cypriot president Christofias will install Kyprianou as his foreign minister. One of his prime tasks then would be to open fresh negotiations for the re-unification of the island. It [...]

Feb

22

Mirow is SPD’s candidate for EBRD

February 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment

In December I was speculating why German finance minister Steinbrück had already given up hope for the next German Commsioner being from his SPD. Steinbrück was making a case then for (more) Germans at the top posts at international (financial) organisations. Now his indications start to turn into concrete action over the top post at [...]

Feb

17

Euroblog conference in Brussels

February 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment

There is an interesting Euroblog conference taking place in Brussels from 13-15 March 2008. I hope to find the time to attend as many sessions as possible to hear about latest developments and what the researchers say about what people like me do on their blogs. When you look at the programme, you actually see [...]

Feb

15

The EU president should be the Commission president

February 15, 2008 | 6 Comments

Lately the talks and speculations about the first “EU president” (i.e. president of the European Council) intensify in particular with the campaign pro and contra Tony Blair. The good thing about these talks is that they raise the profile of the post and people learn that something will change in the EU’s institutional setting. In [...]

Feb

13

Fraud and responsibility for EU funds

February 13, 2008 | 4 Comments

There is an excellent own-initiative report up for vote in the European Parliament plenary next week. The Musotto report (doc) relates to the 2005 and 2006 annual reports of the Commission on the protection of the Communities’ financial interests and the fight against fraud. The worst finding of the report is that vast amounts of [...]