Ursula von der Leyen’s agenda for the European Commission. This is a big chapter and - we fear - a long episode. The last chapter (and last of our episodes on v.d.Leyen’s political guidelines) is all about democracy; about securing our democracy and safeguarding our European democratic electoral processes, which of course is very fitting as the UK’s political parties have gone all out for their own general election campaigns with various stories already emerging about referendum validity, foreign interference and manipulation of the electorate. 

Rich and Carola try desperately to not get hung up too much on UK’s election news, which with all the gaffs coming out from all sides is admittedly rather tempting. But they cover the proposed Conference of Europe, attempt to fill out a questionnaire about the European Union (link to online questionnaire below), discuss the value of the civil service and then Rich has a rant about Carola calling the Westminster parliament the mother of all parliaments and finds a more fitting likening in a doddering great-great grandmother with hearing aids and challenged with mobility. 

Moving away from Brexitland’s inability to move in any direction, they have a bit of fun quoting from an article that discussed what happened with the Spitzenkandidaten-system, but written in the form of a murder mystery. Be prepared for many suspects and many culprits as the reasons why the Spitzenkandidatsystem failed this time around has quite complex contexts. This will hopefully be resolved during v.d.Leyen’s tenure, as laid out in the last paragraphs of the guidelines of v.d.Leyen, who has promised to resolve and pin down ways the European Union will select its leaders in the future. 

Main Source

• Ursula Von Der Leyen: Political guidelines for the next Commission (2019-2024) - "A Union that strives for more: My agenda for Europe" 16 July 2019  (pdf English Version)

Coverage about expense scandals related to Nigel Farage

• BBC (04/06/2019): Nigel Farage refuses to attend EU hearing into Arron Banks cash (www)  
• Guardian (21/05/2019): EU to investigates Nigel Farage over expenses funded by Arron Banks (www)    

Conference of Europe

• Consultation on the Future of Europe (www), including  
•  online consultation (www) 
• white paper (www) 
• and how to get involved in citizen dialogue initiatives (www)   

Other ways for citizens to have a voice and understand more about the EU

• European Citizen Initiatives: “Get a greater say in the policies that affect your lives. The European Citizens' Initiative is a unique and innovative way for citizens to shape Europe by calling on the European Commission to make a legislative proposal. Once an initiative gathers 1 million signatures, the Commission decides on what follow-up action to take.” (www) 
•  What Europe does for me (www)  

Spitzenkandidatensystem

• Andrew Gray, Jacopo Barigazzi and Maïa de La Baume in Politico (07/05/19): Who killed the spiztenkandidat. No shortage of suspects in drama over how EU should be governed. (www)  

Electoral Interference and EUvsDisino

• EUvsDisinfo (www) is the flagship project of the European External Action Service’s East StratCom Task Force. It was established in 2015 to better forecast, address, and respond to the Russian Federation’s ongoing disinformation campaigns affecting the European Union, its Member States, and countries in the shared neighbourhood. EUvsDisinfo’s core objective is to increase public awareness and understanding of the Kremlin’s disinformation operations, and to help citizens in Europe and beyond develop resistance to digital information and media manipulation. (www)
•  Electoral Interference (www)