Anyone but Blair: Stop Blair!

For those of you who have been celebrating the success of Anyone but Barroso! and for those of you still looking for a cause, you can now join a new anti-action:

STOP BLAIR!

This goes against proposals and rumours which see Tony Blair as first EU Council President who would take office for 2 1/2 years after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

The main and strong arguments of the petition are Blair's support of the Iraq war and his fight against the inclusion of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms into the Lisbon Treaty.

For more, read the petition of the initiative.

(via Kosmopolit on Twitter)

Bloggingportal.eu - the European blogosphere 2.1

Thanks to Jon Worth, Kosmopolit and Bente, the EU blogosphere has entered into a new phase:

http://www.bloggingportal.eu

In fact, the site has been quasi-online already for some time in its alpha version, so the surprise is not so big and the design has remained more or less the same over the last months.

Nevertheless, the fact that almost 300 European blogs in different languages have been compiled means that this is the largest aggregation of EU and European blogs I know. In addition, a team of editors will chose the most interesting posts of the day and publish them on the front page of the portal, easing the choice for readers who are new to the EU blogosphere or who do not have the time to follow all the blogs at once.

I hope that through this tool, the interest in the EUropean blogosphere will raise, especially ahead of the European Parliament Elections this year!

The Czech EU-Council Presidency (11): The state of the art

Being on a business trip, I don't have much time to write, but I recommend following the whole debate around the piece of art presented by 27 artists from all over the European Union one Czech artist on behalf of the Czech EU-Council Presidency:

• Oh those cheeky Czechs
• No to an EU ban on Czech art exhibit
  
• La présidence tchèque de l’Union victime de son humour 
  
• The art of European stereotypes
  
• European stereotypes part II
  
• But is it art?
• David Černý : l'artiste aux 27 visages
• EU fails to laugh at artist's joke
• Hoaxes multiply in the Age of the Great Rip-Off

I have to admit: I love that affair more than the actual piece of art!

Europeana open - copyright closed

Please don't miss the opportunity to read Kosmopolit's quite negative account of the re-opened European digital library Europeana!

For him, thanks to very restrictive copyright regulations, a missed opportunity for more creativity and innovation - but luckily, only 2009 will be the "European Year of Creativity and Innovation"...

Thank you, Kosmopolit, ...

... for sharing a friend with me!

Some time ago, I was calling Europe a village, and these days this is confirmed again:

Kosmopolit and I, we have never seen each other, we haven't met, and we haven't lived even close to each other in recent years. Yet, as we now know, we share a friend, a person that we have met on one of our various stays on this beautiful continent. We have met him not even in the same country, the same city, at the same time, but with a difference of time and space that makes this coincidence even more surprising.

Europe is a village - in fact, a small village - and this is why I am convinced that we need a political project that tears down all walls and borders on this continent, our common village. Some will call this project "European Union", but I don't care how it is called. I care about what it offers to us, which opportunity it provides, which spirit it promotes.

What is important is that we can move freely, meet freely, and realise as free persons that we belong together, that our lives are interrelated and that there is nothing better than to discover that we share a friend - or two, or three...