Bloggingportal EU

The launch of Bloggingportal.eu means that you can find (already) 281 blogs related to the European Union in one spot:

http://www.bloggingportal.eu/reader

Alternatively, you can subscribe to the RSS feeds in your reader.

The home page offers fresh and interesting posts, selected by voluntary editors.

Posts is where you go if you want to check all the aggregated posts of the latest 24 hours.

Topics presents a choice of about thirty broad themes and more limited subheadings, if you want to approach the EU blogosphere thematically.

Blogs opens up the EU blog universe, in categories like Journalists, Individuals, MEPs / MPs / Political parties etc.

Contribute offers the opportunity to add a suitable article or to propose a new blog.

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Bloggingportal.eu strives to be multilingual fraternity and sorority, so do not hesitate to propose your own or someone else’s blog in another language than English.
There were language buttons, which kept appearing and disappearing in my reader (IE7) and the language choices (# or +) seemed a bit obscure, but perhaps these questions will be sorted out when Bloggingportal.eu moves beyond the beta stage.

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Press releases, official portals and news items are invaluable for anyone who follows European politics, economics or law, but blogs are where these issues are discussed and debated freely.

With its broad range of opinions and interests, Bloggingportal.eu is the source on European Union debate for every EU citizen.

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Blogginportal.eu is an impressive venture, especially given that it has been created and is maintained on a voluntary basis.

If I were in the shoes of the City of Aachen, I would seriously consider Bloggingportal.eu for the next Karlspreis (Charlemagne Prize) for this most Worth(y) contribution in the service of European understanding and common endeavour.

And potential sponsors, take note.


Ralf Grahn

European Union: Holy Alliance or robust and democratic?

The European Union stands at a crossroads. It can continue to emulate the Holy Alliance or it can transform itself into a robust and democratic union.

For the briefest of outlines on the Holy Alliance, read the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Alliance

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Robust means a union able to reform and to decide, without being frustrated by its own liberum veto (unanimity).

The tragicomic history of treaty reform shows how the European leaders have almost invented the ‘perpetuum mobile’, an unending sequence of failure.

Institutional reform is not navel-gazing, because it is a precondition for the ability to deliver common public goods still outside the effective reach of the European Union, for instance security.

Democratic means giving the citizens of the European Union the power to vote the legislators into and out of office and to set the course for the union in all questions European, through the composition of a politically accountable government.

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Perhaps the paternalistic order of the Lisbon Treaty deserves to fail, until the ‘Copernican revolution’ of democracy dawns on the European Council.

See the Wikipedia article ‘Copernican revolution’ on the paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which placed Earth at the centre of the Universe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_revolution

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Two paradigm shifts to save the European project: Robust rules with the EU citizens at the centre.


Ralf Grahn