Increasingly Europeans realise that they are in the same boat, although some design the improved vessels for the future, some recall scrapped luxury liners of past glory, some see the Titanic fatally heading towards the iceberg (while deck-chairs are being arranged) and some remind us of the harsh and unjust treatment (austerity) which led to the Mutiny on the Bounty.
German and Germany
According to Wikipedia, German was (2007) the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union (18 per cent of EU population; plus the mother tongue of 4.6 million in the enclave Switzerland). Some 32 per cent of people in the EU were able to speak German, making it the second most widely understood language after English (51%).
In political terms, the rest of the European Union and the eurozone have been waiting for Merkozy to stop fiddling, while the UK prime minister David Cameron can mostly watch and hope on the sidelines, so it is impossible to ignore Germany, the most populous nation of the EU in addition to having the strongest economy.
Indeed, together German speaking Germany (82 million) and Austria (8.4 million) represent about 27% of the population in the eurozone and about 18% of the EU total (Eurostat).
Euroblogs in German
In the spirit of cross-border discussion and understanding, Europaeum - @mteu on Twitter – one of the Bloggingportal editors, has compiled an English presentation of the active EU blogosphere in German, including Austrian ones, three from the Baltic states and a Franco-German blog.
Martin then continued with an entry with German language blogs listed on Bloggingportal, which have published since July 2011, a much longer list including a number of policy blogs and blogs by MEPs.
If your euroblog is still missing (or someone else's), you can propose the blog on EU politics or policy areas to Bloggingportal.eu.
Ralf Grahn
Posts
Thanks, Ralf. The next step should probably be to list all German monther tonguers who blog on EU stuff in English. I reckon that list is substantially longer ;-)
ReplyDeleteNo, Martin, thanks to you who did the work; I only passed it on.
ReplyDeleteActually, at this instant I cannot remember many German speakers who blog in English.
Maybe I would think of others, if I sat down for a while.
Wolfgang Münchau is one heavyweight exception, but partially behind a subscription wall.
In my second blog post I mentioned some German media bridging the lingusitic spheres through English news and opinion: DW-World (Deutsche Welle and Spiegel Online International.