Providing new energy for EU policy debates

Will blogs on EU politics and policy always simply reflect legislative debates or will they at some point come to drive them? Certainly, evidence from the US has shown that impact bloggers can have on the policymaking process. Will we ever move to a similar state of affairs here in Brussels?

Certainly, the low level of party politics coupled with the issue focus of Brussels would suggest more rather than less room for informed commentators who seek to lead policy debates. And as we have noted before, the EU blogosphere continues to expand exponentially, yet many of these blogs are general in nature (as this one is), and therefore less likely to influence or inform debates on particular issues. With this in mind, our energy team colleagues led by Ruud Wassen have put down on paper their own top ten blogs on EU energy policy and politics, which is downloadable here in pdf format. The result, a subjective review of the things they like to read in the field. Amongst them are contributions from journalists, academics and policymakers themselves. While these blogs may not yet be driving the debates on the recent energy liberalisation package, they will we are sure provide some interesting insights and views on the many issues at play.

2 Comments

And then there were six… « Public Affairs 2.0
February 29, 2008 | 7:53 PM

[...] With all the good material on energy policy out there, perhaps this Commissioner will have something interesting to say. As one post every Friday is all that is promised, it may take a few months before we see. He clearly does not have the “it’s late on Friday but I am putting off my timesheet entry until after a blog post” urges that we do. In any case if he does succeed, then perhaps Ruud Wassen in our Energy team will revise his list of favourite blogs in the field? [...]

Top Ten Sustainability Blogs: our picks « Public Affairs 2.0
December 19, 2007 | 5:42 PM

[...] sustainability communications practice has recycled (fittingly one may suggest) the concept of our top ten blogs list for particular issue areas. The global team have created their own top ten [...]