Who Cares About Europe? is the caption of the Charlemagne column in the last issue of The Economist. Whether voter indifference needs to be managed or feared is a pertinent question. Comparing it with national attitudes towards government is inappropriate. National politicians may have lost the trust of their electorates but the national system […] [...]

Central Europe had an important Austrian and a rather unimportant Belorussian parliamentary election yesterday. To call the process ‘elections’ in Belarus is somewhat premature: the opposition candidates did not win any seats in the national assembly. After the Russian invasion to Georgia many predicted that Europe’s last old-fascioned dictator (leaving aside the breakaway Trandnistrian rulers) [...]

John Mathiason: The Copenhagen Conference will hopefully produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol; but then the real work begins. Independent organizations will be necessary to tackle adaptation and mitigation requirements, while ensuring, through effective monitoring, that states comply. Self-policing is not an option. Original post by Atlantic Community

The EP Industry Committee has voted to two major components of the Commission proposals for implementing the EU climate targets for 2020, 20 percent C02 reduction, 20 percent increase in energy efficiency and a share of 20 percent of renewable energy in total energy consumption. Last week the Committee has pleaded against a 10 percent [...]

Article published in EDRi-gram 6.18 Following a very strong opposing movement, the decree allowing the creation of EDVIGE file has been abandoned by the French Government, but it will be replaced by a modified project called now EDVIRSP. On 1 July 2008, the French Government had announced a project creating a huge database, EDVIGE (Exploitation [...]

  One year ago, Commissioner Piebalgs stated: “Nuclear is here to stay!“. The trends, indeed, point in that direction: several  European countries are withdrawing their nuclear embargoes and planning nuclear power plants! Leonardo ENERGY has interviewed Jean Van Vyve, the responsible for nuclear generation at Electrabel, discussing some limitations and advantages of nuclear Energy. The [...]

While the United States and Britain reel from one catastrophe to another in the storm of the sub-prime crisis, the eurozone has seemed remarkably detached, until recently anyway. For the Americans and the Brits the news is totally dominated by stories of collapsing banks, bail-outs, vast lines of credit insurance which turn out […] Original [...]

The Austrian grand coalition broke up in the summer and they went into an early election. The voters have had enough: the two major parties achieved their worst results since 1945. There are at least three possible coalitions. Although the Austrian elections seem to be the same old boring thing for the rest of the [...]

Great Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman once more in the NY Times. Like no other, Friedman, who’s recent book “Hot, flat and crowded” should be mandatory reading for all EU policy-makers hits the nail on the head. Two quotes from the excellent article: The bailout is necessary, says Friedman, but “we don’t just need a bailout. [...]

No one would suggest that the 2009 EP elections could provoke as much buzz and fuss as the current presidential elections in the US. While the elections in the US are centred around catchphrases such as ‘change’ or the personality of the individual candidates (or running mates) the 2009 EP elections will be […] Original [...]

Here’s a list of the new coal projects in Germany. Briefly, six projects (7.2GW, 45.4MT CO2) are under construction, while a further 24 projects (23.6GW, 134MT CO2) are in the development pipeline. Does anyone out there know the net position, i.e. also what total capacity (fossil & non-fossil) is closing? Under the unified EU ETS cap, any substantial net [...]

A friend of mine reacted to my previous post (Let’s get the climate panic started!) with the following “inconvenient” questions: “- will the current financial crisis spill over and affect the strong EU policy focus on climate change & energy? Could it shift priorities for the December or the Spring Summit? And for the EP [...]

Promouvoir la tolérance et le respect de l’autre : voilà les objectifs de ce spot vidéo réalisé par la Commission européenne, le réseau FARE et l’UEFA. Appréciez cette vidéo :

M. Jan Figel’, Commissaire européen en charge des sports et M. Enrique Sanchez-Guijo, président du comité paralympique européen (EPC) ont signé le 8 septembre dernier une déclaration commune reconnaissant le rôle que joue le sport dans le renforcement de l’intégration sociale des personnes handicapées. Cette signature s’accompagne d’une aide financière visant à soutenir les activités [...]

EurActiv.sk, Slovak member of EurActiv cross-lingual network, celebrates for the second time in September: On 2nd September we congratulated ourselves for being on-line since 5 year. Today (26th Sept), we published 10 thousandth article. Its author is our editor-in-chief, Mr. Radovan Geist, co-founder and co-owner. Congratulation! Except this fact, EurActiv.sk has published 1,403 analyses, 199 [...]