The EU’s communication strategy has been under the spotlight since the French and Dutch “No”s to the EU’s Constitutional Treaty. The new ‘Reform Treaty‘ in the offing and the European Parliament elections scheduled for Spring 2009 will be major political debates.

Should European fighter aircraft be bombing and strafing tanks and killing soldiers across the EU’s southern borders? Is there a better way, a way to peace? Can Europe’s greatest success be applied across North Africa? The greatest event in recent European history — perhaps in all of European history over the last recorded two thousand years — is that Europe is now at peace.

“What are the prospects for participatory democracy in Europe?” This was the question discussed by the European Economic and Social Committee last week.

Almost halftime of the ‘Robert Bosch Journalism Fellowship Program’ for me – a good time to review and let you know how the work as a journalist in the area of Place Schumann and Place Luxembourg, in the triangle of the Commission, the Council and the Parliament looks like.

A few weeks before the Hungarian media storm broke late last year, the BloggingPortal editors were contacted by the (then upcoming) Hungarian Presidency team, seeking ideas for how they could cooperate with the Euroblogosphere. Being a loosely-at-best organised gang of volunteers, it took us a while to respond.

The new Hungarian constitution will be ready on 15 March and will be adopted a month later, its main author MEP József Szájer, who wrote part of it on his iPad, told me in an interview.

A while ago I posted (Not losing sight of the basics) the idea that EUROPA could suffer if the EU Institution’s limited online communications resources were refocused on social media. While social media offers the EU a great deal, this could be a serious problem, particularly given EUROPA’s importance to any EU social media strategy.

For Greece, it all started in late 2009. One bright day around mid-November, the now ruling Socialist government of G. Papandreou decided to take Greece out of the closet and reveal the true size of Greece’s deficit to the world. The funny thing is, back then no one was really shocked. “Greek statistics”, the constant revision of financial indexes by most governments and the inaccuracy of reporting were a mainstream practice up until then. That’s not a coincidence. In our recent history, ever since the revolution of 1821 against the Ottoman Empire, Greeks always owed money to third parties due to all times classic corruption practices, political clientelism, bought-off constituencies, tax-evasion and top rated, quality cronyism. Owing a couple of billions more in 2010 was therefore just business as usual.

Mr Hannan, David Cameron stated that he would be a strong supporter of Turkey’s EU membership within the EU. But he didn’t say anything about Sarkozy’s outrageous stance when he went to Turkey last week.

EPP leaders are doing their bit to help elect Fine Gael! Last week, I moaned a bit about European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso treating Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny to a photo opportunity in Brussels. I wondered if it was a bit paranoid to think that Barroso was heping his EPP buddy out by making him look like a statesmen just a couple of weeks before Ireland goes to the polls.

Watching events unfold in Cairo over the last two weeks, towards the dramatic climax of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, has been an exciting and moving experience, reminiscent of those days when we watched the collapse of communism and the spread of democracy across central and eastern Europe 20 years ago. But it presents a formidable challenge to the European Union, now blessed (we hope) with a joined-up foreign policy.

They bottled it: EU leaders were due to talk about ways to improve Europe’s hotpotch intellectual property regime on Friday but thought better of it. By the time EU leaders had spent hours over lunch talking about the euro (and drafting a weak statement on Egypt) few were in the mood.