Twongressions to lose Democrats seats? Study on Twitter in Congress

"Republican Party Elephant" logo
Image via Wikipedia

Our colleague Mark Senak’s study on the use of Twitter by members of the US Congress has been making some waves in the media across the Atlantic in recent days. The main headline being that the Republicans are beating the Democrats in their use of the tool. We shall have to see what this means when it comes to the mid-terms.

James

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Add comment January 15, 2010

EU must toughen its stance after Copenhagen

Mexico City
The EU’s next challenge?

For the European Union it was a depressing end to the year! Gone were all hopes of providing global leadership at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. The EU found itself helpless on the sidelines as the US president, constrained by a sceptical Congress, confronted a Chinese prime minister apparently determined to reject any binding commitments which might set limits to China’s CO2 emissions over the next 40 years.

The Copenhagen Accord, put together at a meeting between the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa, seemed more wishful thinking than a blueprint for the future.

President Barroso put a brave face on it, describing the outcome as a positive step, “but below our ambitions”. Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said it would not solve the climate change threat to mankind. The first test will come during January 2010 when developed countries publish their targets for emissions beyond 2020 and major emerging economies make voluntary pledges.

What will be the implications for European policy, I wonder? Instead of the 30 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 the EU presumably sticks to 20 per cent. If there is no global commitment to a plus-two-degree temperature ceiling, no binding reductions for 2050, and the prospects of soaring emissions elsewhere in the world, how can the EU and its 27 member states convince the people of Europe to make the sacrifices needed to achieve a low-carbon economy? I wouldn’t want to hold a referendum on the subject!

Maybe the next 12 months will deliver where Copenhagen failed. Maybe the experience of the world’s leaders getting together in Copenhagen will produce results. Maybe there will be progress in Bonn at the beginning of June leading to the UN climate change conference in Mexico City in December. Maybe. But for this is to happen will require fundamental change in the positions of other players.

The EU played its part in seeking an agreement at Copenhagen. It put money on the table, committed itself to more technology transfer and was willing to accept binding emissions targets, but it strikes me that the EU now has to toughen up its international negotiating stance on political, trade and aid issues. It has the institutions for joined-up external relations policies which reflect its economic importance; climate change is one of the first policy areas where these new capabilities should be mobilised.

Europe is after all a key market for the goods produced in emerging markets: we get the benefits in cheap and abundant products, but at what cost to our long-term wellbeing? The rejection of any binding long-term commitments could affect everyone.  Flooding, drought, hunger and mass migration on other continents would have consequences for Europe. EU leaders should put on the pressure to retrieve what was lost in Copenhagen.

Michael Berendt

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 comment December 21, 2009

About me: could you add that my dog is a poodle named Fredo?

After tweeting and blogging about the Commission’s own biographies of the Commissioner-designates the week before last, the FH team duly set about writing our own bios of the incoming members of the college. This was done with some trepidation given our own ribbing of the Commission’s efforts, but we felt safe in the knowledge that it was hard to make as much as a hash of it as they had.

The bios were circulated to direct contacts by our team members early last week. They are now available for general consumption on our own website. Happily, our bios have already made their way around Brussels as we’ve been receiving some phone calls from the institutions themselves about the content.

As you may expect, assistants in the EP have been asking for the telephone numbers of the offices of the Commissioner-designates. However, the most stand-out call was from a Commission delegation in an not-to-be-named Member State. It would appear that the Commissioner-designate had read our bio of them and wished to include further biographical details about their family life. We were of course happy to oblige.

Any more biographical information on pets, people that are not your former lovers and/or people that are, which Commissioner-designates wish to share with us are happily received.

James

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

2 comments December 11, 2009

Shock: British journalist praises Barnier

At last a touch of balance in Britain’s Daily Telegraph over the nomination of Michel Barnier to the internal market portfolio, with responsibility for financial services! I guess it’s no coincidence that the writer, eurosceptic Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, was the newspaper’s correspondent in Brussels from 1999 until 2004 – the same time span as Barnier’s former term as commissioner. No doubt he has personal experience of the Frenchman’s qualities.

I mention this in the context of the furore over recent months concerning EU appointments, linked in the UK with the debate over financial services regulatory reform and the perceived threats to the City of London. Maybe the frenetic atmosphere is beginning to disperse.

It certainly didn’t help when President Sarkozy told Le Monde that the English were “the big losers in this business”, although the wave of aggression whipped up in sections of the British press over Van Rompuy, Ashton and the Commission nominees was quite a provocation, to say nothing of prime minister Brown’s own trumpeting of the Ashton appointment as a national victory in response to Conservative criticism.

It’s just as well that Sarkozy’s plan for a reassuring joint visit to London with Barnier was knocked on the head. It really would have looked like a French conspiracy.

Barnier has been calming things down. His job, he says, is to strengthen Europe’s financial centres, including London. The fears which had been expressed in the City of London were “very exaggerated”.

There has however been a shift in the political mood which is reflected in the composition of the new Commission. The three key economic portfolios – internal market, competition and industry – go to the Club Med with commissioners from France, Spain and Italy. Free markets, raw in tooth and claw, will not be the flavour of the next five years. The drive is clearly for more regulation, especially in financial services, regulation which has to operate at a European level. That’s no surprise, given that the near-collapse of the global banking system did have Anglo-Saxon origins.

An economic double-dip with more lost jobs would put further pressure on EU policy-makers. The challenge for the Barroso II Commission is to maintain progress in the single market, to stimulate business activity, so helping drag Europe out of recession, and to continue the liberalisation of sectors like energy and telecoms. The nominated energy commissioner, Günter Oettinger, may have the most challenging role, given the problems which German firms have with the gas and electricity packages. Neelie Kroes, on the other hand, should be in her element with the “digital agenda”.

As for financial services, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament are of course working on proposals for financial regulation which also date from the outgoing Commission – the legacy of Charlie McCreevy. These include the establishment of the European Systemic Risk Board managed by the ECB and the three European supervisory bodies for banking, insurance and investment services.

There is some progress on these dossiers. It seems that ministers last week agreed that the powers of the three supervisory bodies will be circumscribed, allowing appeal to the Council by a member state which believes its sovereignty is being infringed. MEPs have yet to discuss these proposals.

Meanwhile the treatment of hedge funds and private equity remains a highly contentious issue which may run well into next year – perhaps beyond a British general election, which some rumours suggest could be in March 2010.

Michael Berendt

Add comment December 11, 2009

To Twitter or not to Twitter: use of digital tools in public affairs

Last week saw Fleishman-Hillard host a panel debate on the use of digital tools in public affairs and politics at the European Public Affairs Action Day. The videos of the contribution of our three speakers (Alexander Alvaro MEP, Pat Cleary of FH DC and Mark Redgrove of Orgalime) are now available on our YouTube channel here.

Here is the contribution of Alexander Alvaro MEP in two parts. The Q&A session of the panel discussion will be uploaded in coming days.

James

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

3 comments December 9, 2009

Commission staff (mis)use wikipedia as often as the rest of us shocker

It’s been an exciting day. We cut our weekly staff meeting short. We gathered around our computers shortly after midday to watch the press conference that saw the announcement of the proposed make up of the new Commission. Some we knew, some we didn’t. From our MD to our intern, we love this kind of stuff. We duly dashed off notes to clients. Climate Action Commissioner and DG  confirmed. French get Internal Market. Transport to Kallas. Obscure DG ENVI unit transfered to DG SANCO etc.

However, the communication emanating from our office that probably caused the activity today was our tweet on the official biography of the new Irish Commissioner – Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. We tweeted on it as it shocked us to read that the new Irish Commissioner had chosen to set the facts straight about her relationship with another Irish politician, Charles Haughey, in the bio that accompanied her announcement as the Commissioner-designate for Research.

In the office we couldn’t believe it. Why on earth would you want to repeat such an accusation, even if untrue, in your official bio? Did Brussels really care? Would the Irish press really focus on this? We discussed what we believed the strategy behind this bold move could possibly be. Surely they couldn’t believe that a premptive strike on an old story that no-one in Brussels had read anyway was the right way to go? Did the Commission-designate care so much as to insist that this statement was inserted in the bio?

Well, no. The answer would appear to be the bio was in part a cut and paste job from her wikipedia entry, rather than an original piece of work. (Thanks to @ako9000 for the detective work). If you’re looking for the bio, it was here. This evening it’s not online due to technical errors…

It goes to show a few things. Firstly, if you’re writing a biography of a Commissioner-designate you probably don’t want to lift it from wikipedia. Especially if wikipedia repeats salicious and untrue details about your new Commissioner’s private life. Wikipedia may be a good starting point for research, but it aint necessarily the truth. Secondly, you can seek to insert balance into a wikipedia article, but balance is not necessarily a good thing. The fact that wikipedia says an accusation was made but it’s untrue does stop the accusation from being repeated. Finally, twitter can be a powerful tool to spread news – however pointless – quickly. Within seconds of our tweet, our own followers had retweeted and theirs had retweeted again. 174 followers had clicked on our tinyurl within an hour of our tweet according to hootsuite.com

James

 

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

4 comments November 27, 2009

EU appointments: visionaries need not apply

We live in the age of media celebrity. So no surprise at the critical and sometimes bitter press reaction to the nomination of Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton, virtually unknown beyond their own parishes, as Council President and High Representative respectively. As someone said, it was like a TV talent show where the choice of the people (and the press) was ignored by the judges. If only we’d been able to phone in!

I guess there are two kinds of disappointment: from those who were seeking charismatic European leadership to force the pace of change and talk face to face with other world leaders; and from those like UKIP who wanted appointment of a powerful figure like Tony Blair to demonstrate that the feared “European Superstate” really had been born. Two sides of the same coin, in fact.

It does at first sight seem a sad reflection on the EU’s lack of ambition that it should choose people with relatively little experience at the highest level of international affairs.

The reality is somewhat different though. This is a period of consolidation. Visionaries need not apply. The European Council was looking for a president who could provide continuity in the management of its business, escape from the six-monthly presidential rotation (although that will still apply for the specialist councils) and build longer term relationships on the international stage. By all accounts Van Rompuy seems well suited to this chairmanship role. His term as Belgian prime minister certainly demonstrated considerable political skills.

It strikes me that creation of the European External Action Service led by the High Representative could be much more far-reaching in its impact than the presidential appointment. Catherine Ashton will have a formidable task, but one with great potential – to “conduct” the Union’s common foreign and security policy and defence policy, making new proposals for policy development and carrying out the Council’s mandate. She will both chair the Foreign Affairs Council and sit as vice president in Commission meetings.

She has to create a European diplomatic service bringing together up to 6,000 officials from the Commission, Council and member states, which for the first time will integrate the Commission’s capabilities with the foreign affairs decisions of the Council, so the trade, aid and substantial budget resources of the Commission can be used to leverage the Council’s policy ambitions. A joined-up European foreign policy at last!

Who knows whether this institutional change will transform Europe’s role in the world as it should, using the soft power policies implemented by the Commission to achieve broader political goals and moving beyond foreign-policy-by-press-release (with all respect to the great efforts made by Solana).

Let’s take one region – the Middle East. The European Commission has for years provided the funding to keep the Palestinian Authority alive, yet the Council has developed no coherent political strategy, for instance on the recognition of Hamas after its success in the Gaza elections and the question of Jewish settlements. It’s time that Europe became an equal partner of the United States in such issues.

There is a host of areas where a stronger EU policy must be developed if Europe’s influence in the world is not to decline further in the face of major shifts in economic and political power across the globe. There is need for a European voice in NATO, much stronger co-ordination of policy within the United Nations and other international organisations and coherent European policies towards China, Russia and others.

In other words there is huge amount for Rompuy and Ashton to do, but they will only make progress if the member states accept the need for a concerted EU approach to the external problems which the Union faces and are willing to toughen up policy vis a vis the rest of the world.

Michael Berendt

3 comments November 23, 2009

Register now for European Public Affairs Action Day – 30 November

Further to our recent post our blogs stats show a veritable stampede of readers (ok, 40 or so…) seeking to find out more information about the European Public Affairs Action Day. You will recall we have a panel at the 30 November event on “To Twitter or not to Twitter: digital tools in Public Affairs” featuring Pat Cleary from DC, Alexander Alvaro MEP and Mark Redgrove from Orgalime.

Alas, all that clicking was in vain as the organisers only opened registration today…Should you have been frustrated by our last post you can now however register online at here.

James

Add comment November 13, 2009

US and EU after Lisbon – Sir Christopher Meyer

Former UK Ambassador to the US and current Fleishman-Hillard’s International Advisory Board member Sir Christopher Meyer talks to colleagues in our DC office about US/EU relations after Lisbon. More thoughts from Sir Christopher on the US and the EU over at our YouTube Channel.

James

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 comment November 13, 2009

21% of MEPs use twitter – according to us and someone else

Twitter
Image via Wikipedia

Counting the number of MEPs that use online tools to communicate is not a bad way to start your company’s blog and attract traffic. We should know as our post that claimed that 11% of MEPs blog is still one of our most visited posts to this day. E-marketing newcomers Digimahti have followed our lead and list 115 157 tweeting MEPs. Not an insignificant number I am sure you’ll agree.

At 21% of the total members of Parliament,  it’s exactly the same percentage that our MEP digital survey suggested used Twitter when we polled them in May this year! Digimahti of course notes that ‘using’ Twitter and having a Twitter account are very different. Our digital survey suggested that only 13% use it ‘regularly’, while 8% use it ‘occasionally’.

We’ll be looking to run our digital survey again next year with the new Parliament to see if that number improves.

James

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

3 comments November 3, 2009

Previous Posts


About this blog

A blog on the use of digital in politics, public affairs and communications in Europe. The blog is written by the team at Fleishman-Hillard in Brussels. Views expressed are personal and do not reflect those of the company or its clients. You will find the contact details of all members of our team at http://www.eu.fleishmaneurope.com

Subscribe to this blog

FH Brussels Tweets

Tags

ALDE barack obama Barroso Blog Blogactiv blogging blogs Brussels campaigns climate change communications digital elections environment EPP EU Euractiv Europe European Commission European elections European Parliament European Union EUTube Facebook Fleishman-Hillard Google grassroots Italy john mccain Member of the European Parliament MEP MEP blogs MEPs obama pat cleary politics presidential elections public affairs Sarkozy Second Life Twitter UK United States US YouTube

Archives

Blogroll

Feeds

Add to netvibes

Subscribe in NewsGator Online

Pages