Archive
Year: 2012
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Fleishman-Hillard Wins EU Consultancy of Year 2012
November 15, 2012
Fleishman-Hillard in Brussels has been named as European Public Affairs Consultancy of the Year at the 2012 European Public Affairs Awards. The award was presented to Michelle Gibbons, Deputy Managing Director of Fleishman-Hillard in Brussels and EMEA chair of the FH Public Affairs Practice Group, at a gala event in Brussels on Wednesday 14 November 2012...
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Making the most of waste residues from this blog
November 14, 2012
As we set in for the winter months here are some waste residues that can be burned without subsidy or fear of eating up someone else's much loved feedstock. 5 years ago: we heralded the arrival of the blogactiv platform from Euractiv and asked whether it was the future of the EU blogosphere? According to the Betteridge law of headlines the answer is 'no'. I daresay the good folks at Euractiv would disagree. 3 years...
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Providing a Warm-Up for the Coming Biofuel debate in EP and Council
November 14, 2012
The FH-Brussels biofuel event (https://fleishmanhillard.eu/2012/11/eu-biofuels-in-tranport-an-uncertain-future/) on Tuesday gave a glimpse of the broader and impassioned debate you can expect in 2013 once the European Parliament and European Council formally sink their teeth into the European Commission’s recent biofuel/Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) proposal. Here’s a laundry list of the views, complaints, observations and questions from the event, attended by many of the key stakeholder groupings in the debate -- industry (Neste Oil, BP, eg), NGOs (WWF, eg...
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It’s air quality, stupid.
November 13, 2012
As you might have gathered from the title, I was inspired by recent US elections. Obama’s re-election marks the third president in a row to have won a second term; the last not to? George H. W. Bush in 1992 when Bill Clinton’s campaign famously highlighted, “It’s the economy, stupid.” By not grasping the importance the economy played in the minds of the electorate, Bush Sr. ended up losing big time. In Europe, the same...
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Learning from Obama: Digital Tools in Political Campaigns
November 5, 2012
Last week saw a veritable festival of events here at Fleishman-Hillard Brussels. We held a discussion on climate change and energy with NGOs on Wednesday as well as a talk from our very own DC colleague Bill Black on how the Presidential candidates in the US are using digital tools in this week's election on Monday. For the US election event our own digital strategist Steffen Thejll-Moller sought to bring us down to earth by explaining how some...
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EU Biofuels in Transport: An Uncertain Future
November 5, 2012
On Tuesday 13 November, Fleishman-Hillard Brussels will host a round-table discussion on the European Commission’s recent proposal on biofuels and the controversial issue of Indirect Land Use Change, or ILUC. The core of the proposal aims to cap the share of food-based, or first generation, biofuels at 5% in all transport fuel in Europe. It also raises the issue of applying, at a future date, so-called ILUC “factors” (or indirect greenhouse gas emissions) to biofuels in addition to the...
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Reflections on the Commission’s ILUC-Biofuels Proposal
October 26, 2012
The day after I attended a Malaysian palm oil conference last week, the European Commission released its formal ILUC proposal on biofuels. I provided a series of views at the conference on the current EU regulatory environment on biofuels that gave a glimpse of the widely reported leaked version of the Commission’s initial proposal in September. If only the Commission’s formal proposal had come out a day earlier perhaps the mood in Malaysia about playing...
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EU Cloud Computing Strategy: How Will It Impact Your Business?
October 26, 2012
On Thursday 22 November 2012 Fleishman-Hillard Brussels hosts a roundtable luncheon on the recently released EU Cloud computing strategy. At this interesting debate, Fleishman-Hillard will welcome two prominent speakers: attendees will hear directly from the EU senior expert who launched the strategy, Mr Ken Ducatel (Head of Unit Software and Services, Cloud Computing at DG Connect, European Commission) and from a representative the leading European cloud provider, Mr Andreas Tegge (Vice President of Government Relations...
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Enthralled and Excited? The Commission Work Programme 2013
October 25, 2012
Every year, the European Commission releases a work programme which outlines the legislative, as well as non-legislative, proposals that will initiated in the following year. This year's Commission’s Work Programme (CWP) for 2013, published on October 23rd 2012, promised to be particularly enthralling and insightful, given that it is the last CWP before the end of the Commission's term in 2014. Why 'enthralling and insightful'? Because it means that this is essentially the last opportunity...
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Public affairs, sushi and dreams of England
October 24, 2012
A little known fact about me is that for one dark summer I worked six nights a week over a ten week period making sushi for one of the UK’s leading supermarket chains. Yes, you’ve guessed it. I grew up in England’s sushi capital; Worksop, North Notts. What has this got to do with a public affairs blog you ask? Well, not a lot. Other than public affairs professionals have to eat too. We are...