I have written before why the SWIFT agreement is bad for Europe. This post is an update based on the final agreement and the new arguments that have been brought forward. In short: the situation has not changed and MEPs should reject the SWIFT agreement. (more…)
Today I will list the 5 main arguments against the EU bank data transfer deal with the US. (more…)
The EU justice and home affairs minister are about to agree on a large-scale banking data sharing plan with the United States. The agreement will have a massive impact on the privacy of banking data of European businesses and citizens. (more…)
Like many people in Brussels I was following yesterday the election of Jose Manuel Barroso as Commission President in the European Parliament. Specifically I was asking myself what role the Socialist Group in the EP played. (more…)
A new, interesting tools has been launched to detect the online traces of any person. Here is what it shows for “Brusselsblogger” (more…)
A recent OECD report compares mobile phone charges in OECD countries. Many readers will not be surprised to hear that - for high-usage customers - Belgium is one of the more expensive countries. (more…)
About two weeks ago the European Union Personel Selection Office (EPSO) announced that selection and recruitment of EU staff will become easier. However, how exactly the new test will look like is unclear. (more…)
The European Commission and the city of Brussels presented today the winners of a design competiton for the Brussels EU quarter. This is how Rue de la Loi could look like:
Tram on Rue de la Loi
I went to Europarl TV this weekend to watch the speech of Czech President Klaus in the European Parliament. But to my surprise I didn’t find any full video of the speech. The only material available in this context on Europarl TV is a short editorial video about the speech (which is the video you see above Blogactiv/Wordpress and EuroparlTV seem not to work together, you have to click on the link to see the video).
Now you can think about Klaus and his EU opinions what you want (and I’m certainly not a Klaus supporter). But he addressed nevertheless the European Parliament and people should have the possibility to judge themselves.
Ironically, I think that a video of the full speech of Klaus could help Europarl TV increase its not-so-great number of viewers 
Update 24/02/2009: The video can indeed be viewed on the website of the European Parliament. I have uploaded it to YouTube and you can view it here:
Update 25/02/2009: Apparently the video below that I put on YouTube only contains the introduction by Hans-Gert Pöttering. For the moment please view the full speech directly on the EP site (click on “Formal Sitting - Czech republic” and then “Vaclav Klaus” in the speakers box).
–> Watch the full speech here: http://www.vimeo.com/3377065 (aarg, it’s in Czech now)
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