Archive

Year: 2007

  • Second Life in Strasbourg

    July 11, 2007

    Stories of Parliamentarians and officials who lead second lives in Strasbourg are not uncommon, let's face it most of us have danced on the bartop of Les Aviateurs at some point in our careers. But today's debate on the Leinen report on the opening of the IGC allowed EU Communicator in Chief Margot Wallstrom the opportunity to slip in what must be Second Life's (SL) first mention in the European Parliament's plenary session.  Margot made passing...

  • EU blogathon

    July 11, 2007

    The veritable online feast of information about the EU and its policies that is Euractiv has updated its list of MEP bloggers. The site lists 9 MEPs who blog; representing a wonderous 1.1% of our elected European representatives. The unelected Commission do better with a strike rate of 4 out of 27 (a shade under 15% in case you wondered). One aspect the article from Euractiv doesn't touch upon is the flipside of the blogging...

  • Sex sells Europe, but reality is better

    July 5, 2007

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koRlFnBlDH0] Since our post earlier this week on the launch of EU Tube, the Commission has scored a digital triumph through its video on the best of European cinema. Nearly 3 million of us have watched the titillating video promoting the Commission programme that supports European film (incidentally the other videos in the same series are also interesting). The video, which was produced for the Berlin film festival, has featured in national news programming such as...

  • Save Internet Radio

    July 3, 2007

    A new signing from our D.C. office was in for a shock last week when he tried to listen to his favourite US internet radio station. The station was not broadcasting on 26 June as part of a US-wide campaign to overturn a recent court ruling that would see internet radio stations pay increased royalties for each song they play. The SaveNetRadio campaign organised a day long mikes down as part of a push to...

  • Commission launches EU tube

    July 2, 2007

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95CuBI-BL4E] Not content with leaving YouTube to iJules, the weirdos and Euronews, the European Commission has decided to get in on the act. The EU's Communicator in Chief Margot Wallstrom issued a press release trumpeting the arrival of EU tube on Friday 29 June...

  • iJules, YouVoter?

    June 29, 2007

    Members of the European Parliamentarians (MEPs) have a tough time of it when it comes to reaching out to voters. The ability of a voter to remember the name of their representative in a national legislature is low but digging out the name of one of the many MEPs that represent us is even harder. The national media don't normally "get" Brussels, nor the importance of the European Parliament in this legislative juggernaut of a...

  • One Seat – a breakthrough for a digital EU?

    June 26, 2007

    In case anyone missed it, the end of last week saw European leaders in Brussels to agree to the framework for an "amending" treaty to reform the way European institutions work. As Gideon Rachman has so equolently pointed out in the FT, the compromises on those pesky institutional issues return to the golden age of EU "obfuscation". We have given up on seeking to get the citizen to understand the details of qualified majority voting...