Sunday 12 July 2009

Europe in blogs (6)


Caution: This post may contain traces of self-referential humour, hidden bitterness, and peanuts. If you read it aloud, you might even think it is a podcast.


Before going through all the blogs for this Europe in blogs, I tried to remember what had happened in the blogosphere over the last week. And there was almost nothing coming to my mind.

What I remembered was that the eurosocialiste was happy (even in French!), which might be because Jon Worth, Boris Wandoren and I all had no idea what to write about, so we wrote about us. Our main conclusion was that we should rule the world.

But going through the blogs I realised that this was quite a happy week for others, too:

The Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, in charge of the EU-Council presidency, was happy about nice informal diplomacy while his colleague, EU minister Cecilia Malmström, was glad about climate deals (empty promises!), Barroso's re-nomination (wow, what a surprise) and the light of the Sony Ericson logo (constant hidden advertisement!).

Tony Barber was happy about the EU leadership changes, including Javier Solana, Jerzy Buzek and an infinite number of EU foreign policy chief candidates, while Grahnlaw switched to the "philosophy mode", asking big questions to European leaders, letting L'Europe de la Défense deal with the next Commission on its own.

From another window in Brussels, Jean Quatremer saw that Barroso was calling everyone to get re-elected. There are no witnesses how Jean reacted, but we know that Vihar Georgiev smiled back at Jean from Sofia.

Important to notice was that ex-MEP and now Finnish foreign Minister Alexander Stubb did a full Ironman triathlon last weekend. But this was nothing in comparison to Cédric Puisney who participates in conferences during his holidays. Alex went green with envy!

For the rest, Martin Teubner noticed that Iceland is on its way towards the European Union, while The Lobby remarked that the PR scene in Brussels still has to find its way to the 21st century.

Joseph Litobarski has changed his blog address and platform and can now be found here. And Stephen Spillane commented the decision for a second Irish Lisbon referendum.

And last but not least, a photo of a pirate in the European Parliament. Oh yes, and peanuts!

There was much more in European blogs over the last week, but that's it for now. Europe in blogs will be back soon.

PS.: I think this was not the best week of European blogging. But holidays are probably doing their best. Hopefully next week everyone will cover the first plenary session of the new European Parliament!

0 comments: