NvOndarza

@NvOndarza@eupolicy.social

Political scientist with a passion for EU affairs, Geek with a passion for technology. Head of EU/Europe Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs / Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP). All views are personal.

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NvOndarza, to random

And so the veto game on Ukraine EU accession begins, with Hungary threatening to veto start of accession talks to pressure Ukraine on the Hungarian minority.

Remember - almost no EU process gifts member states with so many vetos as accession talks.

https://www.ft.com/content/d7eec05d-c2a8-4e75-965d-74db16dfe6b3

NvOndarza, to random

Fun fact: Votes on EU top jobs is one of the few areas where the European Council can and does vote by majority:

  • In 2014, nominated Juncker as Commission President against the votes of the UK and Hungary

  • in 2017, renewed the mandate of Tusk as Euco President against the vote of Poland.

NvOndarza, to random

Interesting data point from Germany if the UK ever were to re-enter EU free movement - due to demographic and economic change, movement from CEE countries to Germany is less than 50% of what it was in 2015 (Romania/Bulgaria) or even only a third (Poland).

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/migration-eu-zuwanderer-1.6067453

NvOndarza,

With low unemployment and rising wages in CEE countries, for most of the people migrating to Germany is no longer as attractive - and would likely be the same for the UK. This could one day also change the debate about the 'costs' of rejoining the single market.

In the contrary, re-joining the single market would also no longer likely fix much of the labour shortages that the UK is facing, with a similiar shortage of labour in many EU countries today, unlike 2004-2016.

NvOndarza, to random

An ironic case of regulatory gravity, with long-term Brexiteer @karlmccartney arguing the UK should follow the EU on ICE car regulation (ban 2035 instead of 2030 and exceptions for e-fuels), including a praisal of the EU approach as one of 'common sense and pragmatism'

https://conservativehome.com/2023/07/11/karl-mccartney-the-government-must-u-turn-on-its-electric-vehicle-pledges-and-fast/

NvOndarza, to random

Big power shift happening in the EU Commission already a year ahead of the election.

At the beginning, @vonderleyen Com was build on two strong executive Vicepresidents, representing S&D (Timmermans) and Renew (Verstager). Now both are expected to leave the Commission this year.

https://twitter.com/SanderTordoir/status/1681957151831359488

NvOndarza, to threads

Google bard launched today in the EU, about two month later than in the US/UK. If two month is the price to pay for more data protection and meeting European regulation, I feel that is worth it (also looking at ).

NvOndarza, to random German

An interesting proof of the theory that more politicisation brings more democratic attention to the EU - with tomorrows knife edge vote in the European Parliament on the becoming front page material in France and Germany.

image/jpeg

NvOndarza, to random

It's a year since @BorisJohnson has resigned. With polling like this from
@Omnisis, it looks like neither his hard nor the Tory Party are very favorable for the UK public at the moment. Though ofc the election is likely a year away, and Labour still shy to discuss Brexit.

image/png

NvOndarza, to mastodon

Amid this social media chaos, my personal policy will be to cross-post on and .

I hope in the long-run meta will follow it up to its promise to link up with ActivityHub, so that I can follow and link up with people from

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

NvOndarza,

However, it still is currently a big loss to me. Many people I used to interact with are no longer on twitter, only some have moved on to Mastodon. Many UK journalists now switch to threads, some to bluesky, some to nowhere.

The public sphere that twitter was to me is now dead.

NvOndarza,

What I currently notice is that even though I have 1/7 the followers on Mastodon, I get much more engagement there than on twitter. Emphasizes my impression that many accounts are just Zombie accounts now, with their users gone elsewhere.

NvOndarza,

@73ms Indeed. I don't post that much (between 0 and 10 posts a day, I'd guess) so I do it manually at the moment. But it really is more something for the moment until I see how things work out. From a personal perspective, I want Mastodon to work, but could see a future where threads is linked to it and I just follow a lot of journalists & official accounts on threads via mastodon.

jon, to random German
@jon@gruene.social avatar

The crucial question, I think, is not going to be if messages can be exchanged between Threads and other services using ActivityPub, but future portability

If I dislike something about the Mastodon instance I’m using I can move to another one and keep the followers

If I were sick of a future ad-filled Threads can I take my following elsewhere? 🤔 It’d not be Meta style to allow that!

NvOndarza,

@jon as a user, for me a question will be discoverability, will I be able to easily find and follow thread accounts from my mastodon account without going through threads? Will they be able to find me and others? If so, it could be quite positive

NvOndarza, to random

Good news according to @POLITICOEurope about a draft agreement between EU and UK about the latter rejoining Horizon and the Copernicus programme. Expected to be announced next week, though some devil might still lurk in the financial details:

https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-and-eu-agree-draft-horizon-deal/

NvOndarza, to random German

UK-EU charm offensive continues, with bilateral today betw @JamesCleverly and EU High Representative @JosepBorrellF, followed by an invitation of Borrell to London.

Remember: in the original political declaration, regular consultations on foreign policy were foreseen. However...

NvOndarza,

... Just weeks after signing the declaration, Johnson and Frost declined any formal foreign policy cooperation with the EU, going as far as first refusing to accredit the EU ambassador to London.

How far we've come, for once in a positive way.

NvOndarza, to Ukraine

Very good thread on the growing debate about how to get the EU ready for enlargement:

https://twitter.com/Mij_Europe/status/1676174195493941248

It took the EU a year to digest what great task it will be to reform if it is serious about 's accession.

I put down my own thoughts here @verfassungsblog:

https://verfassungsblog.de/getting-ready/

NvOndarza, to random

Yesterday at his visit to the European Parliament (at occassion of the EU-UK Parliamentary Assembly, Foreign Secretary @JamesCleverly
delivered a quite telling speech.

It doubled down on a UK gov charm offensive, stressing the intention to restablish a cooperative relationship.

https://twitter.com/EP_President/status/1675869607842795522

NvOndarza,

First, as imperative in charm offensive, Cleverly applauded his audience, stressing that European Parliamentarians are elected representatives speaking the 'language of politics'.

It is almost ironic seeing a UK Brexiteers emphasizing the democratic legitimacy of the EP.

jon, to random German
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Genius. Twitter has just messed up the user experience for non paying users with the rate limits… and now it’s going to make Tweetdeck limited to paying users too https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/3/23783092/twitter-tweetdeck-new-preview-force-legacy-apis

If Musk’s unpleasant views didn’t break Twitter completely, then this rapidly worsening user experience damned well should

(Link via @craiggrannell )

NvOndarza,

@jon @craiggrannell

It also means that twitter is fast losing the one appeal it still had to people like me, which was that most people where still there. Now a lot of people have left in different directions, and most of my timeline is just official channels posting (and let's not talk about the For You tab full of AI influencers...)

ottocrat, to twitter
@ottocrat@eupolicy.social avatar

As Big Tech smells blood in the water and starts circling around #Twitter’s floating corpse, I’m perplexed and angry that #Mastodon still gets dismissed as something that is ‘too complicated’ or ‘doesn’t work’ - seen this recently from tech savvy friends and in a Guardian article. Why?? It obviously DOES work, and doesn’t feel very complicated to me. But people are going to be pushed towards #Threads & #BlueSky, perpetuating the problem.

NvOndarza,

@jon @ottocrat I am a reasonably techy person and still have some issues at Mastodon, like search, not being able to see people's post I not follow who are not on my instance, not being able to put people in lists I don't follow (for special lists) and more.

Some might be just getting used to a different plattform, but the user experience is still worse for me than the old twitter. But that old twitter is dead now, no doubt about it.

NvOndarza,

@jon @ottocrat @theredcount I know there is some kind of philosphical decision behind it, but I miss quote tweets, as they allowed commentary on news articles etc. And a good way to manage lists (or I have not found it yet).

NvOndarza, to random

I am old enough to remember when being 'shackled to a corpse' was one of the arguments for during the time of the Eurozone crisis.

Now, seven years later, the UK's bond yields have just hit new record highs, so that UK has to pay significantly more for debt not only than Germany, but also Greece.

via https://twitter.com/faisalislam

2year yields for the UK and Greece, from https://twitter.com/faisalislam

NvOndarza, to random

A warning sign that the debate about the new dynamics of also needs to be held with the publics of the EU-27:

here is the German Politikbarometer showing support for Ukraine accession dropping from 61 to a narrow majority of 51:

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