Tag archive for ‘European Commission’
The Winner is: Democracy!
Habemus Presidentem. With the Lisbon Treaty ratified, the European Council appointed the Belgian Prime Minister Van Rompuy as its President, and Lady Ashton as Vice-President of the European Commission. The echo has been devastating. The Financial Times has called it ‘a colossal failure of ambition’. However, the decisions by the heads of states and governments [...]
Down, but (definitely) not out
Social democrats need to work more closely together in Europe to reassert a policy agenda reflective of their values.
Social-democratic parties are not dominating decision-making in Europe. The recent gain in Greece was matched with losses in Germany and Bulgaria, and in Portugal we retained control but lost absolute majority. This decline was reflected in June’s [...]
Nomination of the Commission: left backs the right, and wonders why it has no message
The EP elections, the five year democratic interruption to the Brussels game, are long in the past. Everyone is back from their summer holidays, ready for a bout of jousting and positioning in that depressing and opaque game: how to put together a team of 27 Commissioners.
The nomination of José Manuel Barroso as President of [...]
Testing the European Parliament
Europe returns from the summer vacation and a busy schedule starts in Brussels. The most important issue is the election of the President of the next Commission: who will it be and how will he be appointed?
The two questions are, of course, related. For the moment only the incumbent José Manuel Barroso is an official [...]
Tasks of the New European Commission
The study group Europe of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung has drawn up a list of tasks to be incorporated in the programme of the new European Commission over the next few years. Its detailed proposals should serve as a blueprint for political decision-making, as well as a set of benchmarks for the European Parliament and the European [...]
