What should the EU’s overall priorities be? Or those of the next Presidency? And what should the EU Council really be talking about when they next meet.

Last week MEP Martin Kastler (EPP-CSU) launched the first European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI). Is this a slow-motion train wreck, or the dawn of a new era of democracy?
Two things immediately caught my eye when I checked out “Mum and dad belong to us on Sunday” (via @Kosmopolit via @andrewjburgess). First, apparently:
Recently, the European Commission finished [...]

Governments have raised the costs of passports not by a few per cent but many fold. The new biometric passports with hidden electronic data were supposed to be really, really secure. The Dubai incident shows that all these super-sophisticated passports have been BUST. Private data has been stolen. British, French, Irish and German passports have [...]

The following story was published by EurActiv.com on Thursday 29th October 2009.
Leading politicians of the European left appear to have dealt a fatal blow to Tony Blair’s chances of becoming the first permanent president of the European Union, confirming to EurActiv that they want the new position of EU foreign minister instead.
Spanish Prime Minister José [...]

Blogactiv is proud to publish this article about the Lisbon strategy by Maria João RODRIGUES, Professor, Institute of European Studies, Université Libre de Bruxelles, ULB.
The preparation of post 2010 Lisbon strategy in the European Union should start with a clear identification of the challenges ahead. Some were already there but they are changing, and others [...]

Childcare is a 21st century public service - it gives children a great start to their education and learning to live and play with other children, and it frees to look for paid work, it creates work, it brings together the community.
In 2007 the Party of European Socialists ran a campaign to encourage governments to [...] 

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen writes
The PES – and more recently also the European Parliament – has made a clear demand for new regulation to cover all financial players including hedge funds. In response the European Commission has launched a ‘consultation’ on regulation for hedge funds. It is not what we asked for but it is [...] 

It is encouraging to see how many countries have already take action to reduce their contributions to global climate changes caused by humans and hopefully the Copenhagen summit in December will give this action a further boost. However, what is it we really are trying to do?
How the earth was in the past can […]

Original post by K. Tobias Winther

The 5th of November, just before the European summit, PES leaders met in Brussels to discuss the financial crisis and the measures should be taken to tackle it.
What did they discuss? What is the outcome of the meeting?
Here you can find a nice videoclip summarizing the PES Leaders Emergency Summit and Jiri Paroubek, Elio Di […]

Original post by pesmanifesto

Yourspace asked MEPs Gary Titley and Emine Bozkurt – chair and deputy chair of the PES Network for Diversity and Integration – about migration.
Check out our video interviews and tell us what you think.

Original post by pesmanifesto

On 16th July 2008, the European Commission launched a new industrial property rights strategy for Europe. Although there are already some multilateral and bilateral agreements as well as a European legislation in place to prevent and correct IPR abuse in the countries where European manufacturers do business, the challenge is now to better apply and […]

Original post by cecimo

This week Zita Gurmai, President of PES Women and Member of the European Parliament, shares her ideas for the PES manifesto on Yourspace. Among other things she comments on the representation of women in politics:
“The current Europe is an aging Europe: We live much longer. Long life expectancy is good news, but we have less […]

Original post by pesmanifesto

The Yourspace editiorial team has asked Neil Kinnock, former leader of Labour UK, and Lionel Jospin, former Prime Minister of France, about priorities for the PES manifesto for the 2009 elections. Watch the video interviews below and find out more about their ideas:

Original post by pesmanifesto

Last week Ania Skrzypek, Secretary General of Young European Socialists (or ECOSY in short), was our ‘blogger of the week’ on Yourspace. She gave her and ECOSY’s view on what should be priorities for the PES in the upcoming European elections. Decent work, ‘Generation Internship’ and political representation of women - read Ania’s posts below […]

Original post by pesmanifesto

Every week Yourspace features a weekly blogger who shares his or hers ideas for the PES manifesto and the 2009 election campaign. So far we have covered Sweden, United Kingdom, Romania, France and Finland - and received a lot of original and thought-provoking posts. Eric, Jon, Victor, Yohann and Hanna - thanks for all your […]

Original post by pesmanifesto

The 2009 elections for the European Parliament will be important, very important: Among other things the outcome of the elections will have great influence on who will be the coming president of the European Commission. Unfortunately voting turn outs have been decreasing steadily – in 2004 the European average was less than 50 percent!
The Party […]

Original post by pesmanifesto