The Czech President EP address

I’m not entirely sure about what the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus wanted to achieve with his at least controversial address in the European Parliament (See here for whole story). Perhaps the aim was indeed to achieve mass amounts of bad press, which under the “there is no such thing as bad press” theory makes for a quite appealing combination. It is unclear who the Czech President was representing while he ensued on his monologue of euroblasphemy, other than himself.

The saddest part of all, is that the fragments of hurtful truth about the EU were drowned out by his pearls of… wisdom which dominated both post-event discussions, and indeed the press. As Graham Watson noted, “His address was controversial but frank and some of the reactions to it exaggerated. There were some kernels of truth in what President Klaus said about the distance between the voters and the EP to which MEPs should pay heed.

Nonetheless, he fails to appreciate how EU democracy works, nor how the Lisbon Treaty would change it for the better.” Indeed, as commented by UK MEP Jean Lambert, The Czech President expressed his view that political opposition is essential for democracy and got a response which was truly democratic by his own definition!

Note: Brusselsblogger notes that it is quite a shame that the full video is not available on Europarl TV, commenting that "Ironically, I think that a video of the full speech of Klaus could help Europarl TV increase its not-so-great  number of viewers"...

The EP Pool

So the European Parliament is considering spending over 10 million Euros on an “Aqua gym”.

Economic crisis you say?

Well I guess (some) European Parliamentarians don’t care too much. According to Bruno Waterfield, writing in the Telegraph, Gerard Onesta, a vice President of the European Parliament from France, defended the project, supporting that the new gym would have nothing to do with luxury and that the facilities would save money by cutting staff absenteeism by up to 30%.

Cut 30% of staff absenteeism?

Is that to say that EP staff are not working 30% of the time they are supposed to be? Then perhaps the managers or staff needs to be replaced, not the gym… Unless of course by absenteeism is meant time which could be spent working, but would be unpaid overtime, in which case, I sincerely apologize.

Oh well, at least external consultants managed to bill 1.3 million euros.

EUROPADiscovery, a calendar!

It took a blogger by the alias of Anda, who blogs on Kosmopolito.org for me to discover the well hidden EU Calendar on the EUROPA website. The calendar which was apparently presented on January 30, has existed “for quite a while” according to the blogger. The calendar on the EUROPA website is indeed a very useful and welcome addition to EU’s information portal. From citizens to political, academic, and business leaders, the calendar will provide a very necessary tool. The calendar, which will undoubtedly become one of the most heavily-bookmarked pages of the Commission has multiple views, and is flexible, enabling users to browse as far in advance as they like. We thank EUROPA for this feature, and hope they will, when they are ready, provide multiple links to it from EUROPA’s pages.

The calendar can be found at: www.europa.eu/eucalendar