Update (2/11/05, 01:30 CET) - Maybe Angie 2.0 is actually a guy: two East German are now heading Germany’s biggest parties. The SPD crisis management team agreed late Tuesday evening to offer Brandenburg’s state premier Matthias Platzeck (German biography) the party’s chairmanship. Absent any surprises, this nomination will probably be confirmed by the upcoming [...]

To keep track of the of the legislative process (or not) regarding the controversial EU mandatory data rentention directive(s), Statewatch.org has prepared a heavilly “annotated guide to the issues and documentation.”

Read more… or Read more right here… »
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After starting off this year’s early election campaign with a debate about the dangers of the sometimes problematic short term investment horizons of private equity firms, it was the SPD’s very own loony left’s locusts in the party’s board that forced their chairman, Franz Müntefering, to declare that he would not seek re-election at the [...]

Over on almost a diary, I’ve recently mentionend a survey of German blogging called “Weblogs 2005 - Bloggen im deutschsprachigen Raum”, conducted by Jan Schmidt at the University of Bamberg. While the German blogger himself is a relatively unknown species to date, the relatively small size of the German blogosphere as a whole has [...]

Gentle readers, as you may have noticed, following our recent move to a new hosting provider, afoe has been riddled with problems, both on the front and on the back end, making it rather diffictult for us to post, and sometimes for you to read and comment. Should you publish something online yourselves, be warned [...]

Tonight, a French friend sent sent me an email expressing his disappointment about the fact that a Eurodistrict comprising the French (Euro-)city Strasbourg and the German regional authority Kehl, which will be officially created by officials from both parties at a signing ceremony tomorrow afternoon, is falling far short of the enthusiasm it was conceived [...]

Vicenta, Edward, Tobias, and David (from left to right)Some light Friday afternoon reading, and some faces you may not have seen yet. A month ago, almost exactly two years after the day that will live in infamy, the first afoe meet-up took place in Stockholm.
Despite the fact that not everyone in the fistful could [...]

Unfortunately, following our recent move to a different hosting provider, some Euros in the Fistful are still experiencing technical difficulties when trying to post. We’re trying to solve the problem as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, other people are experiencing problems as well. The “K-question”, the question who will become the next Chancellor, and presumably the amjor [...]

Something is happening. Although not in Berlin, apparently. The SPD’s steering committe has not (yet officially) accepted what appeared to be an offer from Mr Schr�der to pursue coalition strategies that would not include him. Since the SPD’s chairman, Franz M�ntefering, explained later that the party’s goal were still a government led by Gerhard Scr�der [...]

As we have been able to witness with unfortunate regularity lately, not every election helps move politics forward. Fortunately, some still do.
While Sunday’s regional election in the Austrian state of Steiermark, which was widely expected to be the decisive reason behind the Austrian government’s determination that the treaty opening EU accession talks with Turkey - [...]