Tomorrow the European Parliaments Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs will hear about the state of play on the first use of the Enhanced Co-Operation Procedure. 12 member states are proposing new rules in regards to Divorce and when it is of a trans-national nature. To me this is a perfect use of the Enhanced Co-operation procedure as it can mean couples can choose the law that suits them most. For example a German married to Italian...
On Saturday night, European Televoters and Juries voted Germany the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2010. This is the second time in the History of Eurovision that German of won the contest, see a history on escireland.com. It now falls to the German broadcaster ARD to host the contest next year. Throughout the voting on Saturday night many comments were passed about the fact that Europe was rewarding Germany for bailing them out and to the fact that...
Image via Wikipedia Today I had the joy of joining members of the European Movement Ireland in part of their schools roadshow on the European Union. Today we visited Colaiste Mhuire in Crosshaven. Leading the show was Andrea Pappin, the Executive Director, and she was joined with by Billie Sparks, the Education and Advocacy Director. I stood quiet in the coner! We were dealing with transition year students. Andrea started off the workshop by explaining about the history of...
Image via Wikipedia Next week the hearings for the New European Commission will get under way. They will start on Monday 11th and continue until the Tuesday 19th. Each commissioner will be questioned for three hours by a committee responsible for the area they are nominated. Each committee will then vote on the nomination, before the Parliament as a whole does. The line up is as follows (Committees also listed, main committee in bold if more then one in...
Image via Wikipedia Heres another round up of issues making the rounds in the eurobloggerosphere at the moment, with thanks to BloggingPortal.eu Swedish Presidency The Swedish Presidency of the European Council is coming an end, and Spain gets ready to share the reins. A number of blogs look back at the 6 months of the Swedish Presidency. Mats Engström calls the Presidency “Effective” but it wasn’t exciting. (then again name one that was!) The Swedish Europe Minister (and Commissioner...
Image via Wikipedia The European Parliament has created a new website to highlight the details of the confirmation of the new commission which will take place early in the new year. There is more information on the candidates as well as the procedure of how they will be confirmed. Here is the step by step procdure as on the website: Parliament receives the Commissioner-designates’ curriculum vitae and their declarations of financial interests. Parliament puts to the Commissioners-designate a series...
Image via Wikipedia Votewatch.eu sent this out to all its users today. Its a good idea and may be a reason in itself to sign up to the website! Important votes were taken during the recent EP’s plenary session, such as the resolutions on the upcoming Summit on Climate Change, the Stockholm programme in the area of justice and home affairs, “origin labelling“, the smoke-free environments, the European Police Office (Europol) and European Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN). The progress...
Image via Wikipedia As well as the appointments made by the European Council last night (more on that later), another recent appointment has come to my knowledge. Dick Roche, the current Minister for Europe, has been made a Vice-President of the European Liberal Democratic and Reform Party (ELDR) . From what I am hearing, a lot of people are not happy about this. Pat Cox, the former President of the ELDR is not a happy man from what I hear,...
Things aren’t looking so good for the Fianna Fail Party in their new Grouping in the European Parliament. At the last plenary session they caused hassle by abstaining on a vote on a resolution by the ALDE, Green and Socialist groups on media freedoms, this caused the vote to be lost. This has causd huge anger in the ALDE grouping. Reports are also surfacing that the Fianna Fail MEP’s tried to scupper a resolution on Gay Rights emerging from...
If your like me, you will want to know what committees in the European Parliament the Irish MEPs have been assigned to. I have gleaned this information off the europarl website and some of ye might find it interesting. Committee on Development Gay Mitchell (FG/EPP – Dublin) Committee on International Trade Joe Higgins (SOC/GUE-NGL – Dublin) Committee on Employment and Social Affairs Proinsias De Rossa (Lab/S&D – Dublin) Marian Harkin (Ind/ALDE – North West) Committee on the Environment, Public...
Recent Comments