http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu Comments on EU affairs and life in Brussels Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:07:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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. If you have not done so, ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2010/02/07/banking-data-why-meps-must-say-no-to-swift-agreement/ Today I will list the 5 main arguments against the EU bank data transfer deal with the US.The background of the deal has already been described in my blog post yesterday. These are the 5 reasons: There is no reciprocity: The US will receive EU banking data and the EU will NOT ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/11/27/5-reasons-why-the-swift-deal-is-very-bad-for-europe/ 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. Background of the deal It's everything about SWIFT, a company that handles ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/11/26/swift-eu-to-grant-usa-nearly-unlimited-access-to-all-eu-banking-data/ 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. The official line of the Socialist & Democrats Group was to abstain in the vote ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/09/17/the-barroso-vote-political-transparency-vs-political-privacy-the-role-of-the-socialists/ I wanted to write about this since long time. I strongly believe the Belgian Post ("La Poste") is one of the worst customer service experiences which the country has to offer. And an ideal exampe of where competition will help improve it. I could tell dozens of such stories (and each ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/09/09/sending-a-letter-in-brussels-good-luck-with-the-belgian-post/ A new, interesting tools has been launched to detect the online traces of any person. Here is what it shows for "Brusselsblogger" The tool is called Personas and was developed by the MIT Media Lab. You can try it out here: http://personas.media.mit.edu (click on "launch personas" to start a search) First I ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/09/03/inside-brusselsblogger-what-this-blog-is-about/ 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. To put this more into an EU context: I have taken the data available via the OECD press ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/08/21/belgium-is-expensive-for-heavy-gsm-users/ 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. The press release announcing the change in the recruitment competitions ("concours") is full of blah-bla. Only in the ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/03/20/eu-career-opportunities-staff-selection-to-become-easier/ 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: [caption id="attachment_109" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Tram on Rue de la Loi"][/caption] To illustrate the drastic difference, this is how Rue de la ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/03/05/this-is-how-brussels-eu-quarter-could-look-like-in-2020/ 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 ... http://brusselsblogger.blogactiv.eu/2009/02/25/where-is-the-video-of-klaus-speech/