Section: European Voice (EU)
The Parliament is bored
STRASBOURG — Ask people in Brussels what they think about MEPs, and they will often roll their eyes. The European Parliament has long been derided as a haven for lazy or disgraced politicians who do little more than churn out boring reports full of acronyms and footnotes. That perception has changed in recent years as the EU treaty handed the...
‘The queen of Austria’
LONDON — It’s April 15 and the Austrian drag queen Conchita Wurst is sitting inside a small theater at the London Book Fair. To her left rests a six-foot high image of her autobiography “Being Conchita,” which has already been translated into five languages. The cover photo — a close-up of her face — is so detailed you can count her...
Eastern Partnership summit likely to disappoint
Thousands of Ukrainians braved clubs and bullets last year to show they wanted a European future for their country; this week’s Eastern Partnership summit in Riga will likely show them that the door still isn’t open. According to signals from Brussels, the EU is not only going to avoid mentioning Ukraine’s possible membership,...
Saving Macedonia
The huge anti-rallies in Skopje this week are the largest peaceful demonstrations in Macedonia’s short history of independence. Somewhere between 40,000 to 100,000 people turned out to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his cabinet. The protesters were not discouraged by government orders for state employees and...
Saving ‘Juncker’s baby’
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is scrambling to salvage a controversial piece of his migration strategy: a quota system for the relocation of refugees across the EU. The plan — which aims to ease the migrant pressure on countries like Italy or Greece by moving refugees to other EU nations — has become a personal project of the...
The inglorious Bundeswehr
Last September, while Ukrainian troops were battling pro-Russian separatists on the eastern edges of Europe, a German battalion participated in a NATO exercise in Norway. They didn’t have any weapons with them, but the German army, the Bundeswehr, has long been used to shortages of equipment. So the soldiers knew what to do: They took a...
Germany needs to calm down
The news that Germany’s BND intelligence service regularly shared classified information with the NSA is the latest in the country’s ongoing debate about surveillance. The story reached a climax when the American CIA station chief was asked to leave Berlin in July after the revelation, the year prior, that the US had tapped German...
A test of the EU’s revolving door
How hard is it for a lobbyist not to lobby? The European Commission is about to find out, after deciding to allow a former commissioner now on the payroll of a software company to continue his work as an official adviser to the EU executive, provided he refrains from promoting his new employer’s interests. In a move set to test the...
POLITICO Pro’s Morning Tech: Activist anger — Ad blocking — Dark fiber
SIGN UP HERE: If you’ve been forwarded this email and are ready to lose the middle-man, here’s your chance for a trial of this subscription-only newsletter: http://politi.co/1H8V7aj GOOD MORNING and welcome to Morning Tech! I’m David Meyer and I’ll be your information dealer, drawing on almost a decade’s immersion in...
Kremlin hails improving U.S. ties
Russian officials hailed the Monday visit of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland as another sign of improving relations between the two countries, while criticism back in America brews over whether the trips from Nuland and Secretary of State John Kerry represent a diplomatic defeat. Nuland’s trip to Moscow comes just days...
