It’s Thursday, so time for a new episode of ConsEUmer with these topics: 🇬🇧 The UK opens up to gene-editing ✈️ Alitalia needs another rescue (w/ Luca Bertoletti) 🐒 Didier Reynders has a monkey 🇪🇺🤝🇺🇸 Will Biden save us? (w/ Ryan Heath)
France’s Fight Against Islamism Becomes Another Cynical Crackdown
Emmanuel Macron might be talking tough, but his real concern is the election calendar The beheading of Samuel Paty in October of last year has had a long-lasting effect on French politics. Paty, a civics teacher, was stabbed in cold blood by an Islamist terrorist as a reprisal against his having shown the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of […]
Turkey’s religious symbolism startles the EU
My latest article was published on Journal. It can be found HERE, and is available to Journal subscribers. Last year, the Turkish government transformed the museum of Hagia Sophia into a grand mosque. The move was a political calculation that sparked outrage in certain religious communities, among defenders of secularism, and in Brussels. The transformation is […]
Having an eye for business
My latest article was published on Journal. It can be found HERE, and is available to Journal subscribers. The Italian brand Luxottica is the biggest market player in its field. Having accumulated large parts of an essential medical device, where does that leave small companies and actors in the optician business? If you want to support […]
ConsEUmer podcast / EP14: Lithuania bans Chinese airport scanners, IP rights, and New Polish taxes (w/ Marek Tatała)
In episode 14 of ConsEUmer: 🇱🇹 Lithuania bans Chinese airport scanners 📝 CCC livestream on intellectual property rights 🧪 EU coordinates rapid tests 🇵🇱 New Polish taxes (w/ Marek Tatała)
The inconsistencies of the European precautionary principle
Genetic engineering continues not to be allowed in the EU, but random mutagenesis is Despite revolutionising agriculture, genetic engineering is not allowed in the European Union. I have laid out the problem with this EU legislation in other blog posts on this website. In this article, I want to explain the blatant inconsistency of allowing […]
ConsEUmer podcast / EP13: Fake vaccines, New border closures, and Farm to Fork (w/ Kerry Hardy)
In the latest episode of ConsEUmer: 💉 Watch out for fake vaccines 🚗 Uber defends its platform workers (w/ Yaël Ossowski) 🛂 Germany introduces new border closures 🌾 The EU reforms agriculture (w/ Kerry Halferty Hardy)
Oxfam’s miscalculations on global wealth
Oxfam regularly releases new reports on inequality and keeps getting it wrong… So let’s revisit an older report to show how the next one is likely to be flawed once again — in an effort to avoid another needless European Parliament debate on inequality. The EU cannot allow itself to get stuck in an endless […]
ConsEUmer podcast / EP12: Alcohol labelling, Private hospitals, and Cryptocurrencies (w/ David Stancel)
The topics in this week’s episode: 🍷 New mandatory labels for alcohol 🏥 Private hospital and pandemic preparedness (w/ Fred Roeder) ☢️ European Parliament groups release new pro-nuclear energy study ₿ Cryptocurrencies as payment systems (w/ David Stancel) You can follow David Stancel on Twitter @dave_stancel.
Red meat is not the enemy
Targeting meat misses the point The leaked EU Beating Cancer Plan layed out that Brussels wants to crack down on red meat, in an effort to reduce cancer in Europe. The European Commission considered dropping marketing subsidies for red and processed meat because of health concerns, but later reverted as it faced backlash. We now […]