Just as for curiosity, I checked the level of indexation on Google.com of Europa.eu, the official web portal of the European Union. Yep, I took this bad habit being a multilingual SEO consultant based in Brussels. The fact that I also worked at th…

The following briefing note has been prepared by Willy De Backer, journalist, at the 2009 European Business Summit. The summit – titled Dare and Care – will be held on 26th and 27th March 2009. Please feel free to comment before and after the session about the topic below. Stuart Langridge Director of Blogactiv.eu 1. [...]

What makes the ruling specially interesting in my region is that the Central European legal systems are very much similar to the German, often based on a shared legal history or simply modeling the strongest country in the neighborhood.

This week, Wang Qing of China Youth Daily has publicly asked the Chinese government to provide details regarding its economic recovery plan. The Chinese recovery plan, adopted in November last year, has a total value of 4.000 billion yuan or around 455 billion euros. According to official press releases, railways, airports and freeways would be [...]

If France was known, until recently, as “the country of the permanent revolution”,  Turkey could very well end up as “the country of permanent coups d’état”. The Turkish Constitutional Court has recently admitted a request to verify the constitutionality of a measure aproved by the Erdogan government, concerning the freedom of female students to wear [...]

I am really wondering about the logic and rationality of European Commission’s decision to invite Mozilla as the „third part“ in the antitrust case against Microsoft. CNET News informs: „Mozilla has been granted a seat at the table in the European Commission’s antitrust case against Microsoft, an EC source said Tuesday.“ My question is: Why, [...]

Since the young in the West take peace between Germany and France for granted, and the young in the East got used to democracy without a fear of communism, the European Union and its institutions seems to be running out heroic missions. To be relevant to the “citizen” the EU needs to provide useful services [...]

Conversations on the Hill and with US industry representatives on a climate change bill I had recently exchanged views with the staffs of Representative Dianne Feinstein, Senator Jim Webb and Representative Jay Inslee on the shape of a future US climate change bill in Washington DC. Their knowledge of our ETS including the difficulties of [...]

The Commission expects to adopt rules for using up to 300M ETS allowances to aid demonstration of CCS and new innovative renewable energy technologies by the end of this year, accordingly to unofficial notes circulated recently between officials and posted here. In a cover note and time schedule, DG Environment outline its process and time-lines for implementing [...]

A new poll for the Sunday Business Post in Ireland reveals that 58% are in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, 28% are against and 14% are undecided. In my view, the risk of a ‘No’ will be greater after the European Elections than before.  The European elections are likely to return a more fragmented and Eurosceptic Parliament.  The [...]

Only nine months ago, food security was at the top of the global agenda. Rapidly rising food prices caused by increased demand and poor harvests exacerbated by the scarcity of water and land, and trade distortions propelled the topic of food security to the top of the political agenda. Meetings and summits were held, money [...]

Généralement je fais payer TRES cher mes conseils, me sentant d’humeur particulièrement charitable, j’offre gracieusement quelques recommandations désintéressées au Parti socialiste pour les européennes: 1. Mettre à jour le site rapidement: hier soir, rien sur le site du PS sur le rassemblement des secrétaires de section à la Mutualité. Pas de retranscription de discours ni [...]

Yesterday came the order of innovation that encompasses many aspects of innovation in language education since the plan to read:1.Orden of 16/01/2009, the Ministry of Education and Science, laying the groundwork and are called economic aid for development projects and extensions to educational innovation projects selected during previous school Non-university supported by public funds of [...]

Daniel had posted several times about the effect of the Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis. This thought were formulated in our discussion following his post which drew attention to Gazprom deputy-chairman Mr Medvedev’s op-ed in the WSJ Online. That is the Russian side of the story. I wanted to flip the coin and defend the Ukrainian position. [...]

Press release by La Quadrature du Net, European Digital Rights (EDRi), Working Group on Data Retention (AK Vorrat), and Netzpolitik.org, 2009-01-28: EU proposal puts confidential communications data at risk Civil liberties groups La Quadrature du Net, European Digital Rights (EDRi), AK Vorrat, and Netzpolitik.org are urging the European Parliament to heed advice given by the European Data [...]