Archive

Year: 2010

  • Tweet Your MEP: a new direct democracy tool is in town

    September 15, 2010

    Yesterday I was privileged to attend a meeting about the Citizens’ Consultations with a keynote speech from Viviane Reding, Vice President of the Commission. As a discussion about citizen interaction within Brussels policymaking, it was the perfect venue for the announcement by Toute l’Europe of their new website Tweet Your MEP, a tool they developed in cooperation with Europatweets. Even now there are still some Twitter skeptics around in public affairs. ‘What is the point?’ they...

  • FH Podcast: Personal Democracy Forum – Interview with founder, Andrew Rasiej

    September 13, 2010

    The Personal Democracy Forum, which Fleishman is co-sponsoring in Europe this year, is the world’s largest conference on how technology is changing politics. This year’s event is taking place in Barcelona on October 4th and 5th, with a great set of speakers, panelists and delegates from the worlds of politics, governance, civil society and business (read more about the programme here.) As part of our involvement, we will be hosting a break-out session in which we will explore...

  • Giving hope light – Special Olympics Torch Run in Brussels, 14 September

    September 10, 2010

    For once we will not talk about the latest EU regulatory developments…but about a very special initiative that will ‘arrive’ in Brussels next week. To herald the opening of 2010 Special Olympics European Games, which will take place in Warsaw staring on 18 September, athletes and partners are carrying the Flame of Hope in a series of relays through eight European countries. On Tuesday 14 September the torch will be in Brussels for the Belgian...

  • Evolution not Revolution for Financial Supervision

    September 6, 2010

    Don’t expect the earth to tremble: this is evolution not revolution. New rules on supervision of Europe’s financial markets, which ECOFIN ministers were expected to approve on Tuesday (September 7) will certainly strengthen Europe’s capacity to anticipate trouble and to handle it when it comes, but the armoury remains firmly in the hands of intergovernmental bodies –  the European Central Bank and the three sector bodies created years ago under the Financial Services Action Plan...

  • Tweeting MPs get Minister ‘down on her knees’

    August 26, 2010

    As the Dutch Parliament is officially still on its annual summer leave, several MPs turned to Twitter to raise questions about the conduct of Dutch Environment Minister Tineke Huizinga, who rented a private jet to travel back and forth to attend a budget debate during her holidays in Italy. MPs of other parties expressed their discontent through Twitter leading to hundreds of negative Tweets by the general public. The end result: due to the ‘unexpected’...

  • FH Podcast: Thought Leadership

    August 10, 2010

    I’ve recorded our first podcast on Corporate Communications and Public Affairs in Europe. Why podcasting, I hear? We believe we know a fair few people at Fleishman and beyond who have plenty of interesting things to share but might not always have the time to blog. We figure that sitting them down and asking them to talk for 10-15 minutes about issues which they believe are important to our business and the world of European...

  • Around the world in “Tweety” days

    August 2, 2010

    We like it when a neat idea, some good will and a little Twitter get together: Paul Smith, a 34-year-old freelancer, returned from his honeymoon with the travel blues. Yearning for another trip, he decided to try to get from the UK to Campbell Island, 200 miles off the coast of New Zealand in less than 30 days. He posted his goal on Twitter and was eventually picked up by Stephen Fry (of Jeeves and...

  • The Wikileaks phenomenon: impact on 21st century statecraft?

    July 26, 2010

    Yesterday evening, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel published analyses of a six-year archive of classified documents from US-led forces in Afghanistan, released to them by the organization Wikileaks.  The disclosure of the material has already raised much debate about what The Guardian has termed “the biggest leak in intelligence history.” What is different about this leak is that it is mainly happening online, and the debate around it currently spans from...

  • The Kosovo Ruling and Obstacles to Enlargement

    July 25, 2010

    Last week’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence did not contravene international law was bitter news for Serbia, which had brought the original case. The Serbian president Boris Tadic said that his country could never accept the unilateral declaration of independence, while for Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians it was the breakthrough they had been seeking. For everyone the episode was another reminder of how deep the streams of...

  • Mapping the Euroblogosphere: what are the must-read EU political blogs?

    July 12, 2010

    Difficult question, one to which we would be tempted to answer: all of them. But as that wouldn’t be of much help, we’ve had a go at making our own selection of the must-read EU political blogs, also known as Euroblogs. Inspired by previous attempts such as those of NoseMonkey, Jon Worth, the Bloggingportal and Lobby Planet, we’ve created Fleishman-Hillard’s own selection of Euroblogs in our brand new Netvibes page here, for anyone to follow...

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