Europe needs a new mechanism for involving citizens, not another talking shop chaired by the Guy Verhofstadt... By raising expectations it can’t easily deliver on, it risks eroding citizens’ trust...won’t directly prepare treaty change... a preparatory process ... could lead the European council ... to initiate them... this time the conference is …

How the Conference on the future of Europe will look like? ... it's the European Parliament ... to offer 1st blueprint... in essence a Constitutional Convention model PLUS... 'plus' is so tiny that fails to capture ... vivacity of EU civil society ...prepare a set of “concrete recommendations” that may be turned into legislative and…

2009 : une communication très marketing : plus tactique autour du « buzz game » que stratégique... tente de faire l’impossible synthèse entre des priorités contradictoires avec des modalités plus parallèles que complémentaires... plutôt que de tenter d’intéresser les citoyens aux offres électorales... la campagne de communication du Parlement eu…

The Brussels Bubble triumphalism over the #EUelections2019 turnout rate is staggeringly self-absorbed.- thread

“So I and fellow Australian-in-Brussels Richard Medic decided to ask some friends to help answer a couple of questions: How can the EU support its superheroes, without destroying their credibility in the process? And under what conditions should it even try?”

despite improvements in the number of female MEPs, there is still a chronic lack of women in key decision-making positions, particularly in the Commission and the Council. - EUROPP – The lack of gender equality in EU decision-making means EU citizens are still suffering from a ‘double democratic deficit’

FalseA German journalist and camera crew have fun with the EP gravy train in “Scandale au Parlement Européen : Argent facile, champagne à gogo et autres privilèges. This sort of film iseasy to make and so becoming commonplace. And people in the Brussels Bubble wonder why they are not so widely loved elsewhere?

"The MyVote 2014 tool is the latest in a series of tools of this sort ... but this time it’s different in one crucial way: MyVote 2014 uses data about MEPs have voted in the past (between 2009 and now to be precise), and uses this as the data for the tool. This makes the outcomes of the MyVote 2014 tool more solid than previous efforts. Rather tha…

This is the sort of post which could get me into trouble for a number of reasons. Particularly as I'm going to comment on the celebrations to be enjoyed next month at the Festival of Europe, where one can do everything from "seeing the political groups at work inside the European Parliament" to "experiencing a fest…

Julien Frisch blogged about a very thoughtful post on writing for (y)EU by Steve, a web editor from the EP, who sounds distressingly like me (white, British, 40s and sceptical about the Generation Y definition of 'friend' despite having many) and seems to be coming down from a post-holiday Web2.0 overdose. The key paragraph, highlighted …