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When the European Commission starts talking about a plan to "connect the EU with its citizens" you know that something supremely ridiculous is about to happen. Poster competitions are one popular device, but the Commission on one occasion even tried wowing Europeans by sending a copy of the draft EU constitution into space.

This month Brussels will unleash its latest drive to befriend the alienated citizen - and for once it has actually come up with an idea that is simple, innovative and that promises to do some lasting good.

Continue reading "Back to school"

For many people, the EU speaks a language all of its own.
It’s a particular blend of desiccated jargon, with phrases such as "council framework decision" "comitology" and "third pillar" regularly uttered by those on the Brussels circuit.
My favourite entry by far in the dictionary of Eurospeak is a "non-paper." To my bemusement, I learned that it was a policy paper - but wasn’t as yet a final, agreed policy.
In fact, the EU has 20 official languages, which swirl through the interpretation and translation rooms across Brussels and beyond.

Continue reading "Tongue-tied"

One of the trickier image problems for the people who run the European Union is that the bloc’s founding, over-arching aim has been so comprehensively achieved that they struggle to remind the European on the street what the EU is for.
Even the most casual observer will have observed that, since the supra-national alliances from which the EU would germinate began to form in the 1950s, their members have not fought wars against one another.
But then, as Albert Camus, that early investigator of a pan-European identity, observed, in the end you get used to everything, and Brussels has had to fill its daily bulletins with something other than: "Europe continues not to bomb itself."
Instead, the European Commission’s latest offering is titled: "What did the EU do for me in 2006," a list a the 10 earth-moving changes the club has wrought in the lives of its 500m or so citizens this year, including cheaper mobile phone calls, better labelling on food and new chemical regulations.

Continue reading "Apart from peace and better labelling, what has the EU ever done for us?"

Britain has been traumatised in recent months by stories about a tidal wave of Polish and Lithuanian workers coming to the UK. Given the tone of much of the media reporting of the issue, it is hardly surprising that British support for the EU enlargement process has fallen by eight points to 36 per cent in just six months.
Such a response would seem bizarre in the United States, where it is far more common for workers to cross state lines in search of jobs. In fact, such labour mobility is a vital part of the US economy’s success.

Continue reading "Europe needs more mobility, not less"

Woe betide Europeans whose lot it is to be young, foreign or female. So says Anthony Giddens - Baron Giddens of Southgate, to the likes of you and I - who has spent the week in Brussels delivering his findings after a year probing the European social model.
The big problem for the European Union, says Giddens, who made his name as the architect of the Third Way theory that shaped the political vision of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, is its "radically divided labour markets". These are most gratuitously in evidence in Italy, Germany, France and Poland, where the jobs of an inner core of workers are treated as sacred.

Continue reading "The haves and have nots"

When Siim Kallas, head of the European Commission’s administration, embarked on a drive to improve transparency in the EU’s funding and decision making last year he said he wanted to open up "Brussels’ black box". Too much of what went on in Europe’s capital was hidden, he said.
The rejection of the proposed constitution by voters in France and the Netherlands soon after he launched his transparency initiative proved that he was on to something. The public in two of the Union’s founder members felt that decisions were taken far away by those stuck in a Brussels bubble that listened more to those lunching them at swanky restaurants than taxpayers and voters.

Continue reading "Opening up EU ‘black box’"

It pays to be alert when you walk in Brussels. You have to look down to avoid the dog mess on its famously besmirched streets while also dodging the scaffolding and cement mixers that signal a building frenzy in the city.
The drab EU quarter is no stranger to the construction craze. Builders have for months toiled on the pink granite Justus Lipsius centre that represents member states: until last week a large green skip sat unceremoniously by the entrance.

Continue reading "A centre without a heart"

Apart from the spanking new flagpoles their national ensigns will occupy in Brussels after January 1, Romania and Bulgaria are seeking to make their mark as the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh members of the European Union.
In the run-up to accession, each has dispatched an eminent citizen as a candidate for the post at the European Commission that is the entitlement of each member state.
On Tuesday the committees of the European Parliament that oversee the policy areas to which the new commissioners will be assigned gave their blessing to Meglena Kuneva, Bulgaria’s minister for Europe, and Leonard Orban, who led Romania’s membership negotiations. The approval will come as a particular relief to Bucharest, which hastily selected Mr Orban after its initial nominee withdrew in a flurry of corruption allegations.

Continue reading "And what do you do?"

In its drive to get us all to do our bit to combat climate change, the European Commission has adopted a pithy slogan: "Turn down. Switch off. Recycle. Walk." It seems, however, that Europe’s functionaries are reluctant to comply with the second of these four edicts.

Photographs passed to the Financial Times show several of the EU’s most illustrious buildings - including the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers’ Justus Lipsius building - lit up like Christmas trees in the middle of the night. The Committee of the Regions is incandescent.

The pictures, taken at the behest of the European Lamp Companies Federation, have surfaced as Europe’s energy ministers convene in Brussels to vote on the Commission’s action plan for energy efficiency. The draft conclusions declare that "the public sector should play an exemplary role" in fostering energy efficiency.

The action plan - which activists fear may be watered down by ministers - is intended to sketch out how Europe could cut its energy consumption by a fifth by 2020 through switching to greener technologies and adopting such energy efficient habits as, say, turning out the lights.

Barbara Helfferich, the Commission’s environment spokeswoman, says the images should not detract from the overall decline in the electricity used by Commission buildings. A strict eco-management pilot scheme is under way, complete with targets to render the EU’s activities greener. The scheme has, Ms Helfferich adds, "sensitised personnel to switch to more environmentally-friendly behaviour".

Tom Burgis

For a Brussels reporter chasing controversy and rough and ready action, a few hurdles stand in the way.
These include arcane policy discussions that mean little outside the Brussels bubble and endless talk of the need for EU-wide co-operation to avoid dispute - hardly zippy material for stories.
But then there is Viviane Reding, telecoms commissioner and a former journalist.
Along with Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner, and Charlie McCreevy, internal market policeman, Ms Reding is one of the few card-carrying members of Brussels’ "bombshell politics" club.

Continue reading "The Brussels bombshell club"