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.
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).
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.
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'
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.
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 #threads).
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 #NatureRestorationLaw becoming front page material in France and Germany.
It's a year since @BorisJohnson has resigned. With polling like this from @Omnisis, it looks like neither his hard #Brexit 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.
@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.
You are so right. Hysteria day has begun. Journalists drooling it's got 10 million users already and posts here like:
"I tried #Threads and it's awful and they stole my data just like they said they would"
You can't really begin judge how things will pan out until 3-6 months down the line when things have stabilised with software/servers/moderation coming to terms with users. By then we may know if and how they may federate. Only then can decisions be sensibly made.
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:
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...
... 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.
@nf3xn@NvOndarza@verfassungsblog whatever happened to the issue of the Council being in breach of Treaties as one of the votes/vetoes comes from a non-democracy?
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.
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.
I am old enough to remember when being 'shackled to a corpse' was one of the arguments for #Brexit 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.
@markus@NvOndarza Yeah, about as € was supposed to collapse any day now the last 2 decades.
And don't forget about our little trouble with PL & HU.
(But the USA is a country with 50 states where the governors swear absolute allegiance to the feds daily before breakfast, right? The GOP officially dreaming of defunding half of the federal government, is absolutely no issue to discuss US problems, but look at the EU, it is quarrelling about its budgets as every 7 years, the end is near!)