Olaf Scholz is an avowed fan of the European banking union. “We need a common market for banking services”, emphasized the Federal Chancellor at the German Banking Day in April. He wants to make the capital market union and the banking union a “top priority”.Now one could argue that a cross-border merger is in the […]
Anyone who has recently frequented the Member’s Bar of the European Parliament in Strasbourg or the streets of Brussels’ European Quarter is likely to have come across Sven Giegold. The former Green MEP is currently spending a lot of time in his old workplace. Not out of nostalgia, but to promote the German positions (or […]
The budget woes of the Berlin traffic light have consequences for the German School in Brussels. The international school with excellence status is attended by many children of EU diplomats and Members of Parliament. On Wednesday, an email arrived in parents’ inboxes that began like this: “The German government’s budget has been preoccupying politicians, the […]
It’s not common to hear Europe come up very often during American presidential debates. But that was the case on Tuesday, when foreign policy – especially in relation to Europe – was central to the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.Here’s a quick rundown of the most discussed moments related to Europe from the […]
Germany has the most MEPs in the European Parliament: 96 out of 720, yet it has the least chance of changing institutions and becoming a member of the European Commission. To be more precise: No German MEP has ever succeeded in becoming a member of the Commission.Apart from Fritz Hellwig. The CDU member from NRW […]
Perhaps you sometimes feel the same way: You just want to have a quick look at what’s new on Instagram, TikTok, X or even Facebook – and you get lost in the endless supply of content. You’re fascinated by a sloth slowly crossing the road, then by a terrifying deep-sea monster and then by cute […]
After personnel planning is before personnel planning: Once EU Commission President von der Leyen has distributed the commissioner posts in the coming weeks, she will have to think about the rotation of her top officials. After all, managers in the EU Commission are supposed to change jobs every five years. A major shake-up is on […]
If EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen receives the hoped-for majority for a second term of office in the European Parliament on Thursday, she wants to run the Berlaymont again with a Commission made up of equal numbers of men and women. She explicitly announced this in her candidacy speech in Strasbourg in 2019.At […]
Democracy has to be learned. In fact, as the sociologist Oskar Negt said 20 years ago, democracy is “the only form of government that has to be learned.” And one would like to add that this is especially true for the European Union. Because here, democracy has its very own rules. Everything is even more […]
Who is Sibylle Berg? Despite an 84-minute documentary about the German-Swiss author, numerous columns and books by her – we don’t really know. The author remains elusive, somewhere between an artificial figure and complete seriousness. Serious, for example, when she criticizes the miserable conditions in care and even capitalism in general. So nasty that it […]