European Commission

This will be my last blog.  I am leaving the European Commission – and Brussels – after 10 years. Ten years is a long time when I look at my youngest son: he has transformed from a small (mischievous) boy to a strong-willed teenager with a girlfriend.  Ten years is of course a short time in the history of Europe: but we in the Commission contributed in shaping it, for example through enlargement, environmental legislation and the introduction of the euro.

For me personally it has been a magnificent experience: politically and from a management point of view – all these wonderful people who have worked with me in my cabinets and services both on environmental and communication issues!  To say goodbye to them is the hardest thing to do now…
There are a few things I will NOT miss:
- …

So what are my thoughts after almost five years of blogging?

First of all, I really enjoyed it but it was more time consuming than I had expected.  It sounds easy to sit down and write a piece per week but finding the time to do this when you have to do a lot of travelling and many many meetings to prepare for and attend is not as easy as it sounds.  As a Commissioner you constantly have mountains of papers to read. I am not at all complaining, far from it, but let me describe briefly what you have to do:  Every time you visit a country and have meetings with Ministers, Parliaments, NGOs, students and national media you have to read through a very thick briefing file.  Similarly, preparing for the weekly Commission meeting requires reading enormous …

Last week finished with the yearly Christmas lunch with my team where we had the traditional Swedish “smörgåsbord” with pickled herring, Jansons temptation, salmon, meatballs, ham and other delicacies. Good food and Christmas carols was a perfect end of a busy week which I partly spent in Malmö in the south of Sweden. There more than 150 participants, representing civil society, business and legislators, gathered at the Road to Copenhagen Conference to explore the necessary drivers for ensuring a Copenhagen climate change agreement based on climate justice. Together with Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and Vice President of the Club of Madrid, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, UN Special Envoy for Climate Change and former Prime Minister of Norway, I hosted the conference.

This was the third conference aiming …

I haven’t had the chance to write for a while but I have been reading all the comments, as always, and thought I would respond to some of them:

- a number of people have asked what will happen to my blog when I leave the Commission and whether other Commissioners will blog during the next mandate.  Well, I will write again on this topic before I leave but I will say at this stage that blogging is very much an individual choice and takes a lot of time. I will be recommending to future Commissioners that they should certainly think positively about it.

- on what will happen to the communication portfolio:  President Barroso announced last week that Viviane Reding would be responsible for communication and citizenship as well as justice, fundamental rights and gender equality.  Putting communication and citizenship …

United in Brussels yesterday evening for the occasion of an extraordinary dinner summit, the heads of States and governments agreed on the names of the two high profile posts introduced by the Lisbon Treaty: the President of the Europan Council and the High Representative/Vice-President of the European Commission.
Concern had been expressed that the dinner would be prolonged into a dinner followed by a breakfast, or even into a dinner-breakfast and lunch scenario, but surprisingly, the final results were announce early yesterday evening. Whereas the post as President of the European Council was attributed to the Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, the double-hatted post as High Representative/Vice-President of the European Commission was given to Mrs Catherine Ashton, …

When the Lisbon Treaty enters into force on the 1 December, it will offer a new opportunity to citizens to influence the EU agenda. It is the Citizens’ Initiative that will enable one million citizens to request the Commission to bring forward a particular policy proposal. At this weeks Commission meeting we decided to launch a wide public consultation, a so-called Green paper, to help to define for example the number of countries from which people must come, how to check that signatures are real, what form a petition should take etc.
I therefore encourage all of you to participate in this exercise, to give your views on how best to design this new …

The Constitutional Court in the Czech Republic said that “it is a court, not a place for endless debates”. It ruled that the Treaty of Lisbon is in conformity with the constitutional order of the Czech Republic and there is nothing to prevent its ratification. And then President Klaus signed. A long and bumpy road to a new EU treaty finally came to an end and the new treaty will almost certainly enter into force on 1 December.  One of the new provisions which interests me greatly is the Citizens Initiative. With 1 million signatures you will be able to ask the Commission to take an initiative on a particular issue.  The Commission will launch a public consultation next week asking for views on how it can best be implemented in …

For two days last week (22-24.10), Stockholm was a real buzz. The fourth edition of European Development Days was organised jointly by the European Commission and the Swedish Presidency. I was honoured to be asked to participate in this annual event that drew together thousands and thousands of people from all over the world.

The main themes of this year’s event were Democracy and Development, the Financial Crisis and Climate Change.  At the heart of the Stockholm Fair Centre Älvsjömässan was the so called “Development Village”, where one could meet hundreds of organisations and learn more about their ideas on international development co-operation.

The whole scenery was colourful and almost overwhelming, with so many opinions and strong statements about development aid and a sustainable future for all. But the best feature of the event was …

Last week I visited the U.S. Despite the freezing cold, I received a warm welcome, both in Washington D.C. and New York. The purpose of the visit was to discuss two issues of global urgency: climate change and matters relating to women & security - two highly timely and complex issues that have acquired some momentum recently. However, meetings with representatives in the UN and the Obama administration, as well as with civil society organisations underlined that we still have a lot to do, if we want to achieve a deal in Copenhagen and a painless reality for women and children in conflict and war-zones.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made impressive efforts in preparing the ground for a new UN resolution about sexual violence against women, which introduces a real mechanism of sanctions and …

First of all I want to thank those of you who expressed condolences on the death of my mother.  It is very much appreciated.  It has been a difficult time lately but I have been able to spend time with my extended family, of course mourning her death but also reflecting on and enjoying memories of my mother’s life.  She was close to 90 years old and had lived life to the full and, although death is always hard to deal with, I know she died as she would have wished – quickly, painlessly and with her friends.

I came back to Brussels only yesterday and I was of course delighted about the overwhelming Yes vote in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. A turnout of …

I visited Ireland again last week.  It was interesting to see the country in full referendum mode with posters all around and the press and airwaves full of Lisbon Treaty related discussions.  As I repeated many times over the two days, I am accountable to the public and was happy to answer the many questions put to me by the media and at public events.

In Dublin I spoke about the impact of the financial crisis and EU solidarity with Ireland at a lunch organised by the European Chamber of Commerce and later on Women in the EU at a meeting of Labour Party women.  I mentioned that The European Central Bank is providing loans of some 900 billion Euros, 130 billion of which will go to …

Together with my husband I was invited to the presentation of The Polar Music Prize Laureates 2009  in Stockholm last week. Two outstanding musicians and personalities received a nice sum of money from a donation by the late Stig Andersson (who wrote some of the most well-known lyrics for ABBA, for example).  Jose Antonio Abreu & El Sistema (a music-education program in Venezuela) and Peter Gabriel  both prove that “music has no limits but incomparable power” as the motivation for the award read. They both got standing ovations and in total it was an evening filled with fantastic music and inspiration. And nice to see my husband in black tie for once…

This might be the first time that I openly admit my admiration for a military general. I read an interview with US General Stanley …

It is not always easy to follow or understand the inner workings of the European Parliament – or the dynamics within and between the different political groups. The “power games” that undeniably go on behind the scenes after an election do not normally engage the general public. At the moment the EU Institutions find themselves in a situation between the existing Nice Treaty and a new Lisbon Treaty which (hopefully) will enter into force before the end of the year. So the appointment of a new Commission President is uncertain and has been made part of the “deals” being discussed in the EP at the moment.

This is my view:

1. The procedure for nominating and appointing a Commission President and Commissioners has to become even more …

Brussels tempts us back from holidays with warm weather, making the transition smoother maybe…? Long into the autumn I will remember what it was like to unpack innumerable moving boxes (since we moved all of our stuff from Brussels to Sweden end of June) and the phenomenon of finding that the things we wanted were always in another box…
But there were some highlights this summer: like the performance “Kalevala” by Västanå  Theatre in Värmland . Like the celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary. Like picking blackberries while listening to Robyn on my iPod. Like swimming in the (cold) lake early in the morning after a jog in the forest. Like hugging my brothers and having the whole family around the table.

I tried to follow some of the debate …

So, August is here and summer holidays and a news drought with it! Last week the Swedish think-tank Timbro released a report complaining that “EU information is not neutral”, that we “buy coverage in the media” and that “millions of euro are spent on advocating closer European political and economic cooperation”. I must say I was rather surprised by their biased and incomplete image of the EU’s communication activities, something I explained in a letter to the editor of Svenska Dagbladet.

The authors of the Timbro report define communication in an astonishingly simplified way: it is either “information” or “propaganda”. What they completely overlook is that communication is a vital element of democracy because it is a two-way street. It is every citizen’s right to be informed about what the EU does, but also to make …