There’s life behind those grey Brussels walls - and where there’s life, there’s struggle: One President for the EU or separate presidencies for Council and Commission? More power for the Parliament or for national governments? Speedier legislation or more scrutiny? And then of course the question that grasps everyone’s attention: Who will be ruling the EU, and how do we get there?

This story about Europe as an Innovation Union was published by EurActiv on 2nd March 2010.
The EU’s new growth strategy, due to be rubber-stamped by the new Barroso Commission on Wednesday (3 March), includes a blueprint for transforming Europe into an ‘Innovation Union’ by 2020.
A leaked draft of the ‘Europe 2020′ strategy ties together research, [...]

EUobserver today reports that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has written an angry letter to EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton demanding to know why Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has appointed ‘his man’ as the EU’s new ambassador to W…

Governments have raised the costs of passports not by a few per cent but many fold. The new biometric passports with hidden electronic data were supposed to be really, really secure. The Dubai incident shows that all these super-sophisticated passports have been BUST. Private data has been stolen. British, French, Irish and German passports have [...]

Author: Agnes Lima
It’s raining again this morning and the wind makes a rustling noise when it rubs against the windows. It’s the second week that I refuse to carry my umbrella with me and I seek shelter under the eaves of the buildings stretching along the way to my office that is [...]

Further to the post of 25 January, Baroness Ashton is still under attack for not going to Haiti, notwithstanding that the UN had requested that dignataries do not visit the island, so as not to disrupt the emergency aid activities. She stated then that Development & Humanitarian Aid Commissioner, Karel De Gucht, would go when [...]

It should be a time for celebration. The Lisbon Treaty has come into force, a new European Commission has been convincingly approved by the Parliament, the European Council has a permanent president and a European foreign policy structure has been created.
Yet it feels as if Europe’s clock has been turned back ten years, to the [...]

It seems that yesterday was a rather gruelling day for EU leaders with hours of squabbling over how to handle the looming Greek tragedy. Then cue left enters EU President, Van Rompuy, who, we assume, wanting to lighten the atmosphere, decided to announ…

… Wir haben eine Kommission …! Sechs Monate hat es gedauert bis zu dieser Wahl, sechs lange Monate,in denen die Europäische Union rein formal gesehen etwas kopflos erschien… Es war ein elendiges europäisches Hin und Her, aber so richtig gelitten darunter hat vermutlich nur das engere Führungspersonal in der EU, allen voran Barroso selbst - [...]

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the new Commissioner responsible for research, innovation and science, was not prominently mentioned in the media reports on the European Parliament hearings (except perhaps in her home country Ireland). However, she did leave a positive “can do” impression and did not face any difficulties in passing the European Parliament’s assessment of the Barroso [...]

The following article about Commission spokespersons was published on 22nd January 2010 by EurActiv.
Despite the EU executive’s efforts to hire a more multilingual and diverse team for its spokespersons’ service, critics condemn the “dangerous” trend in the European institutions towards the linguistic and cultural hegemony of the English language.
An internal document seen by EurActiv shows [...]

This article about EU officials was published by EurActiv on 21st January 2010.
Ahead of a confirmation vote in the European Parliament on 9 February, EU commissioners are being asked by their president, José Manuel Barroso, to make their cabinets more multinational and gender-balanced, an internal note seen by EurActiv reveals.
The internal note distributed by [...]

Sir.
Regarding ‘Barroso on collision course over Jeleva‘:
I just don’t get it.
The CV submitted by Ms. Jeleva to the European Parliament and to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso states that she was a “manager” at Global Consult in the periods 2001-2003 and 2006-2007.
The company’s income statement for 2008 (!) which can be found on the [...]

Over on his Brussels blog, the FT’s Tony Barber contrasts the lively and thorough hearings of presidential appointees in the US Senate, to the European Parliament’s dull and far-from-rigorous confirmation hearings of would-be commissioners, which are ta…

The Hungarian nominee for EU Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner, Laszlo Andors, has had his European Parliament today, and it was not quite as dull as some other hearings - Mr Andors seemed willing to share his views on several issues and actua…

As the European Parliament ‘confirmation’ hearings for incoming EU Commissioners rumble on in the background, we thought we might take a look at Cathy Ashton’s hearing yesterday. It received a fair amount of press coverage (see here, here, here and her…