As you may know, the current Italian EU Presidency is quite active on Twitter. It has amassed more than 32,000 followers to its account, @IT2014EU. The Latvian government – which holds the presidency in the first half of 2015 – is already tweeting via two accounts – in English (@EU2015LV), and in Latvian (@ES2015LV). They have a combined total of more than 3,800 followers.
This weekend, the European Council will meet again to decide on the holders of the EU’s top jobs.
Here’s our five-point guide to Saturday’s meeting and what it means – and have your say on one of the key issues of the summer by voting in our poll.
After the failure to agree on the top jobs at the last summit in July, European Union leaders are under pressure to reach an accord. The European Council is increasingly gaining a reputation as an institution that takes too long to decide anything, and whose decisions are often ‘fudges’.
Saturday is the crunch moment: if EU leaders fail to conclude a ‘package’ of appointments, it will put paid to any remote hopes of appointing the Commission on time. More importantly in the long term, it will increase popular and global perceptions of the EU as a sclerotic organisation. Herman Van Rompuy (pictured left), the President of the European Council, was criticised by EU leaders and many analysts for not preparing a watertight deal before July’s summit (although he was not helped by some prime ministers). The President will not want another failure.
The decisions are not easy: there are significant political, institutional and personal headaches for the 28 leaders. But the leaders are there to lead, and to decide. It’s time to act.
With the choice of a President of the European Commission still up in the air, we are a long way off knowing the full team that will occupy the upper floors of the Berlaymont for the next five years.
Nevertheless, national governments are already putting forward their proposed nominees to sit in the new College. Here’s our look at the comings and goings in the Commission in 2014, and the potential candidates to take a seat in the new Commission.
If you have comments or suggestions, please include them in the comments box.
See our country-by-country guide to the potential nominees
Europe’s voters have backed a vast array of anti-EU and anti-establishment voters in the 2014 European Parliament elections, sending fewer MEPs from each of the main political groups back to Brussels and Strasbourg.
Despite being the biggest loser of the night in terms of seats, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) looks like emerging as the biggest party in the European Parliament with its support holding up in Germany and Poland among the larger member states, and good support across central and Eastern Europe. The Socialists are also set to lose a handful of seats, with the Liberals likely to lose around 20 seats according to the latest projections.
The countdown continues: at 08:00 CET on Wednesday 2 April, there are exactly 50 days to go to the opening of the polls for the European Parliament elections.
Here is our overview of where we stand and what you need to know about Europe’s year of change:
Top jobs | Country-by-country | PollWatch 2014 | The elections and beyond | Reading list
Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, was officially confirmed as the ‘common candidate’ of the Party of European Socialists during an election congress in Rome.
Schulz – the only candidate – was backed by 368 delegates in the Italian capital. Two delegates opposed Schulz and 34 abstained.
In his acceptance speech, Schulz set out his priorities should he become President of the European Commission. He highlighted that his first priority would be employment, a theme that is also prominent in the Socialist manifesto, also adopted in Rome.
The Congress welcomed the Italian Democratic Party (PD) as its newest member, with the moniker ‘Socialists and Democrats’ now added to the Party’s logo – possibly hinting that the parliamentary Socialists and Democrats Group, whose name was changed to reflect the inclusion of the PD, will revert to the ‘PES’ name after the elections.
Read our Storify of the PES Congress (storify.com) See our photos from the Congress (flickr.com)
The election of Schulz as the Socialists’ common candidate means that the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is the only main party yet to officially name its candidate.
On Friday, Michel Barnier – the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services – joined the race, nominated by his own party (France’s Union for a Popular Movement) and backed by EPP member parties in Hungary and Slovenia.
Barnier will face the former prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker (also backed by parties in Germany and Greece), who is favourite to win the nomination, and former Latvian PM Valdis Dombrovskis, who is supported by parties in Estonia and Lithuania, as well as his own party.
EPP delegates will pick the party’s lead candidate in Dublin on Friday.
EPP Dublin Elections Congress websiteThe European Democratic Party, whose members include the Democratic Movement (MoDem) in France, adopted its manifesto and will chose its common candidate on 12 March.
EDP manifesto (pde-edp.eu) A number of national parties also selected candidates for the European Parliament elections this weekend (click the country name to go to the candidates list for that country):
At 07:00 CET on Tuesday 11 February, there was exactly 100 days to go to the opening of the polls for the European Parliament elections.
As the countdown to the elections intensifies, here is our overview of where we stand:
Top jobs | European Parliament election candidates | European Parliament election opinion polls | Processes and procedures for the elections and beyond | Potential nominees to the European Commission | Online conversations | Also on Europe Decides
Here’s an idea.
In three weeks’ time Greece will take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. By 11 December, nearly 4,000 Twitter users had followed the Greek Presidency’s @gr2014eu account.
So far, the account ranks among the most effective presidency accounts of the last five years. By 4 December more than 81% of its tweets has been retweeted, on average more than 17 times. Almost two thirds of its tweets have been ‘favourited’.
The account consistently mentions other Twitter users, such as Greece’s foreign minister, Evangelos Venizelos (@EVenizelos), and the foreign ministry (@GreeceMFA). The team running the account also uses at least two hashtags per tweet, including #gr2014eu, #EU and #Greek.
However, building up a following on Twitter requires significant time and effort: so what if Greeks built on the audiences of previous presidencies by curating a common Twitter account rather than starting from scratch?