Archive
Year: 2011
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The Power of Reding
July 12, 2011
I’m a big fan of the FT Brussels Blog. Today’s headline in particular caught my eye: “Women take over the Berlaymont.” It outlines the growing attention around European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding’s latest crusade: increasing quotas for the percentage of women in the executive boardroom. The European Parliament advised EU businesses last week to increase numbers of women in their boardrooms by next year or face a mandatory quota of 40% by 2020. While...
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1st Worldwide Personal Democracy Meetup Day – 12 July – We’re in! What about you?
July 8, 2011
Last year we blogged about our cooperation with the Personal Democracy Forum folks. As you might know, the Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) is an online community and annual conference about the impact of technology on politics, government, and democracy. Next week our PdF friends are taking things to a whole new level. This time the conference is going global. On 12 July, PdF is organising the first Worldwide Personal Democracy Meetup Day. About 50 cities...
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Brussels traffic worse than Beijing
July 7, 2011
As you may know we work from the Brussels Bubble but our firm is global. As such, we're lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with and meet colleagues and friends from around our company's 80 odd offices on a pretty regular basis. Our recent 20th anniversary celebrations of our Brussels saw representatives from pretty much every continent (except Antarctica) visit us. One of them was our esteemed colleague Wang Lei from FH Beijing. A former MOFCOM official, Lei has...
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Europe Fails to Prepare for Impending Dangers
July 7, 2011
Europe is blind to its longer-term interests in defence and foreign affairs, claim two speeches in London this week. Former NATO Secretary General George Robertson and Douglas Alexander, foreign affairs spokesman for the British Labour Party, both castigate the failure of European policy-makers to look ahead and prepare for impending dangers. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned a few weeks ago of dangerous strains within NATO and the inevitable shift in US policy. Lord Robertson...
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Small things that could make a big difference for the EU
July 6, 2011
Since my return to these shores from the U.S. I find myself noting the little things that are different between that country and Europe. It happened again the other night as the missus and I sat down to restart the West Wing boxset from the beginning (a TV show that this blog has neglected to reference since 2009 despite it being the best show of all time - shame on us). It was Josh's shirt that got me going...
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Everyone loves a good story
July 5, 2011
The other day I attended an event on the Future of Mobility and Transport in Europe and a quote from an MEP, who was on one of the panels, got me thinking about ‘storytelling’ in public affairs. While discussing Intelligent Transport Systems, the MEP asked fellow participants whether they have ever thought – while having breakfast – where each of the items on the breakfast table comes from, and what journey they have made. What’s...
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Greece Chooses Change over Catastrophe
June 30, 2011
Greece must choose the road of change or the road of catastrophe: that was how Greek prime minister George Papandreou described the two options facing the Greek people before Wednesday’s austerity vote in the Athens parliament. Parliament’s approval, by 155 votes to 138 with five abstentions, marked a first step. More must follow as implementing measures are presented to parliament on Thursday. Then must follow the unleashing of the concrete measures themselves. The two scenarios...
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US-EU relations are worse than managing three small children
June 28, 2011
You know all hope is lost for a normal life when a paper from the US Chamber of Commerce drops into the inbox at midnight and you decide to read it on the iPad before getting some sleep. You would have thought three young children were enough to keep one awake. Damn those good people at the Chamber. During my brief sojourn in the United States the US Chamber's European programme was a revelation. It may not...
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10 things they don’t tell you at school
June 24, 2011
Moving to a new job can be daunting, especially if you’ve only really studied before and not spent any significant amount of time in a professional environment. For myself and fellow interns at Fleishman-Hillard this year the transition from academic to professional life has been massive. To help you understand just where we are coming from I decided to write a last post with ten things that they didn’t tell us at school. ( The...
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Dear Commissioner, signed 2.3 million people
June 24, 2011
Our client The Body Shop has, in conjunction with ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purpose) run a campaign to end the sex trafficking of children. The campaign has become a truly global phenomenon: the petition supporting it has amassed over 6 million signatures worldwide, with 2.3million of those from across Europe. The handover of the Europe-wide petition to Commissioner Cecilia Malmström is taking place on June 28th...