As I read some of the latest news about the Greek election and the attempts to form a government I am struck by the following quotes: “We cannot make true our dream of a left-wing government“, says Alexis Tsipras of SYRIZA and that “F…

In my last post (What Is The Cost To Europe Of Individual Actions?) I looked at the apparent movement of money out of Greece and into potentially safer locations. That is, of course, only one form of individual action. This weekend has seen another sor…

Your author has just returned from a short weekend trip to Berlin. This is not my first visit, but it was my first time with a group of people that are mostly German, live in the city and know it well. In other words, I was able to see and learn much m…

This week provided a stark reminder that “markets” are not as perfect as we might hope. The double-whammy of the Dutch government falling and Nicolas Sarkozy narrowly losing the first round presidential vote sent markets sharply down. Yet, …

Life has been treating me well recently (summer is coming, I have a new business venture to concentrate my mind on, several people have commented that I have “lost weight” and family members have recently visited me) and it hard to imagine …

Several of my recent posts have related to the “skills mismatch” in Europe. In these times of high unemployment it seems right to do so and I clearly recall the emphasis placed on education during the eSkills launch a few weeks ago (I wrote…

It would seem as though luck and central banking might not have much in common, but today I am going to argue that these factors may be about to create a very big problem for the eurozone. If we cast our minds back to this time two years ago, the UK wa…

At last week’s e-Skills launch in Brussels (I wrote about it here) I was witness to a wonderful example of the will to win. Attending as a delegate was a girl of 24. She was very pleasant and interesting to talk to. I was first introduced to her …

It has been a few weeks since I last wrote about the eurozone crisis and the news has gone very quiet. The Greek problem seems to be solved, yes? We should all relax, yes? Well, umm, not yet, no. For what it is worth, your author is still amazed that t…

Your author was in Brussels on Monday for the launch of the 2012 e-Skills week by the European Commission. The event was split into three sessions and for me, session number three lit up the day. This is possibly problematic since the session only had …

Thursday 15th March is the awards ceremony for the 2012 video challenge launched by the European Economic and Social Committee. At the time of writing, I don’t know who the winner is, but there were some very good entries (my favourites are here)…

Over at the Economic and Social Committee they have been running a video contest. The closing date was last week, but now the public voting has opened. If you are a facebook user, then you can vote! If you vote, you might win an iPad! For what its wort…

Think back a few weeks to the last European Summit. By all accounts the idea from Angela Merkel that there should be some sort of oversight by Europe in Greece on how they spend bailout money and restructure their public finances was not viewed well. I…

While Greece may be the birthplace of mathematics and all those symbols used by financiers to build models, I am starting to wonder whether the ability to count is a lost art in Greece. This has been forming in my mind for a while, but recent evidence …

Since my last post a few days ago (The Digital Policy Landscape Seems To Be Moving) the European Council has convened and pushed European digital policy even further forwards. With the hoo-ha going on in advance about whether Greece should have some fo…