by Colman
Mon Aug 28th, 2006 at 07:46:11 AM EST
For some reason - probably an overextended association with educational institutions - the end of the summer marks the beginning of my organisational year. It's when the world stretches itself and starts up again and it's when I naturally reassess where I am and what I'm doing. I think it's a natural time for ET to reassess what we want to be doing over the next twelve months as well since it marks the end of the European holiday season. Over the next few weeks there's going to be a lot more activity in the European political and business world and we should have a lot more to think about.
One of the things that we've wondered about in the past is how to bring ET to the attention of the movers and shakers that have the power to do things. Talking among ourselves is fine and entertaining but if we want to make any real difference we need to get our writing and the results of our rantings out to a wider and an influential audience.
We've had some success with that already, especially with Jérôme's efforts at letter writing and especially the contribution to the biofuels consultation. There are further consultations - the energy one has a due date coming up soon and we should probably do some work on that this week - and these formal structures are one way of trying to have some influence on policy.
I've been thinking about how we can influence politicians at the EU level. We have a respectable and growing readership that is interested in European politics so perhaps one way of engaging politicians is to interview them and maybe eventually to encourage them to post diaries on the site, though we'd probably have to grow rather larger before that became a sensible investment of time for them.
I've got an e-mail interview with a reasonably senior MEP lined up for next week and I see no reason that we can't make similar contact with Commission members or at least their spokespeople.
What do you want to see happening here over the next year?
