Margot Wallström, Commission Vice-President in charge of institutional relations and communication strategy, has written her final (?) blog post (15 December 2009).
The post was suitably headlined Blogging, and Wallström used it to sum up nearly five years as a blogger, as well as the emergence of a European blogosphere featuring individual blogs, multi-contributor blogs and newspaper blogs.
These blogs are thoughtful and do not slavishly follow either a pro or anti EU line, a fact which I find very valuable, Wallström concluded.
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At the time, Wallström was the only audible voice among the EU institutions to call for a readable (consolidated) version of the Lisbon Treaty, and her pugnacious promotion of women to fill top jobs did not go unnoticed (although officialdom was not always amused).
Margot Wallström brought a whiff of humanity and Nordic openness to the Commission and the EU institutions, and she created a bond between the European Union and (some of) its citizens.
A small, but significant sign: Margot was the only one as likely to be referred to by her first name as by her family name among engaged citizens of the European Union.
Thank you, Margot, and the best of luck!
Ralf Grahn
P.S. Find your own favourite blogs and posts on European affairs at multilingual Bloggingportal.eu. About a hundred updates daily offer you a variety of themes, viewpoints and languages among the 494 euroblogs listed.
Congrats, ralf, on your honourable mention in Margot's blog!
ReplyDeleteFrench Derek,
ReplyDeleteThank you for mentioning it, as well as for your many interesting comments, which have helped my thinking about the EU, for better and for worse.