Strife between Hungary and the European institutions has been building for around a decade. There have been angry exchanges, but no genuine rift. Orban’s authoritarian drift seems to have reached its peak, with COVID-19 as an excuse. Will something finally give way?
Regulation of the European Parliament is highly voluntary. Compared to 90 percent of Swedish, Danish or Finnish MEPs who disclose meetings with interest groups, only one out of ten Greek, Polish and Bulgarian MEPs do so.
In recent months, Covid-19 has put Western democracies to the test. In the larger European countries, the space for democratic deliberation has been greatly reduced. In this regard, new technologies represent a major opportunity.
At a micro level, the exit of British MEPs impacted on one of the tools that we developed to keep track of the European debate. Since we have created it, #brexit has constantly been among the most popular hashtags used by MEPs.
MEPs' receive a gross salary of €8,757.70 per month, plus others reimbursements. But related perks are not transparent, as they don't have to show the receipts for their expenses.
The MEPs in the European Parliament's committees are divided up among 20 standing committees and two sub-committees (Human Rights (DROI) and Security and Defence (SEDE)), specialising in concrete areas of EU's policymaking.
While climate change may be drawing the attention of the public, MEPs’ twitter profiles seem to find relatively little room for it.
After months of delays, the von der Leyen Commission is finally set to take office on the first of December. What did the last few months involve, and why did it take so long?
The big debates on the EU's future that traditionally follow the State of the Union address (also known as SOTEU) by EC Commission President Juncker at the European Parliament did not grab all the attention of Brussels-watchers today.
Will parties run enough women, and will they be placed in electable positions on electoral lists? Besides electoral systems, determination and concrete action are required to incentivise female representation. Let’s take a look at where we are now, with the numbers in hand.