Let’s try to cut through all the spin on the Reform Treaty which was put on the IGC rails on Saturday morning 23 June.
First of all, the compromise reached is no more and no less than the draft Constitution brought in through the backdoor. In a mockery of the two no-referenda in France and [...]
Archive for the ‘European Union’ Category
After the summit: time for a two-vision Europe
Posted in Eu Constitution, European Commission, European Parliament, European Union, Merkel on 24 June, 2007 | 2 Comments »
The “irrelevant” EU summit
Posted in Eu Constitution, European Public Sphere, European Union, Merkel on 19 June, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Will the European Council meeting of 21-22 June go down in history as a “new beginning” after the draft Constitution failure in France and the Netherlands? I am sure it will not.
Even if, on Friday, EU leaders manage to strike a deal on a “roadmap” to a new Treaty, what the summit will be remembered [...]
Time for real political debate in Brussels
Posted in European Public Sphere, European Union on 10 June, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
This week’s Economist has an excellent analysis of think tanks and political debates in Brussels. Its main message: “the level and quality of public debate in the EU capital are depressingly low”. I could not agree more having attended and sometimes moderated lots of the conferences or seminars where these debates should take place.
The article [...]
A carbon-neutral parliament is not enough
Posted in Climate change, European Parliament, European Union on 23 May, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
It is amazing what media attention can do. Now that all of them have seen the green light (or is it the “inconventient truth”?), politicians are trying to compete for becoming the climate champion of the year, the “EU Al Gore”. If ever the thesis about our “spectacle” democracy needed any confirmation, we can find [...]
The missed opportunity of the 2007 Berlin Declaration
Posted in Climate change, European Union, Resource scarcity, Sustainable Development on 20 May, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
In a comment to the first post of this blog, Raymond van Ermen wrote the following:
“The Berlin Declaration celebrating the EU’s 50th anniversary is very disappointing for two reasons :
o In January 2007, President Barroso named sustainability as one of the EU’s five key values, to be enshrined in the Berlin Declaration celebrating the EU’s [...]
EU 2007: lack of vision and fear of democracy
Posted in Eu Constitution, European Union, Wallström on 11 May, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
I attended two citizens’s debates on the EU’s constitutional crisis in the last few days and got ample confirmation that we are just whistling in the dark when confronted with what is probably one of the EU’s most serious crises.
The first debate on the June 2007 roadmap (taking place in the European Parliament on 9 [...]
The EU is dead, long live the new Eco-Europe!
Posted in European Union on 28 April, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Europe is at a historical crossroads. The European Union, which has been a unique and by and large successful project, has reached its final destination and needs a fundamental visionary as well as institutional redesign if it is to find answers to the overwhelming global challenges of the 21st century.
Neither the latest EU enlargement nor [...]
