David Lidington ist der Minister für Europa im Vereinigten Königreich. Das ist er bekanntlich erst seit kurzer Zeit. Um die Europapolitik der britischen Regierung an möglichst vielen Interessen auszurichten, bittet er heute in einer Videobotschaft auf seinem Blog um Fragen aus ganz Europa. Die Fragen sollen einfach als Kommentar hinterlassen werden.
Es interessieren ihn besonders Fragen, Kommentare und Vorschläge bezüglich Großbritanniens Rolle in der Europäischen Union in vielen aktuellen Fragen. Eine weitere Priorität sieht er im Balkan, dessen Zukunft er als Lackmustest bezeichnet.
Als Abgabefrist für die Fragen hat Lidington den nächsten Dienstagmittag, den 27. Juli angegeben. Am 30. will er dann auf möglichst viele der Fragen eine Antwort geben.
Is a “party place for everydays” what we want for the European Union? Perhaps not, but we could definitely live with some more creativity and especially effort for European issues like the artist “DJ Trexx” has put into his election campaign contribution with this humorous 90′s eurotrash track “A Union of Peace, Love and Bass” which I stumpled upon today and that I’d like to share with you here.
Now, he might not become the next Margot Wallström (EC Communication Strategy) or even a new creativity ambassador with his performance, yet he raises a valid point. It’s the elections to the European parliament this week where we can shape our future in and for Europe. Let’s do so!
So, in the spirit of a Union of Peace, Love and Bass and with the words of DJ Trexx: “Take you positions, party brothers and sisters, and let me see you dance like you got ants in your pants. Yes, democracy is cool.”
Update (04 June 2009): Today the faces behind this song released an English version of the Swedish press release explaining the whole project:
Swedish comedian/musician Micke Lindgren let’s his character DJ Trexx rock the vote for the upcoming European Parliament elections with new song A Union of Peace, Love and Bass DJ Trexx (Micke Lindgren) rose to Swedish fame during the national Eurovision finals, where he and his merry band of dancers performed a satirical showstopper called “Tingaliin – russian bass lovers remix”. [...]
Now, DJ Trexx is back with a message to Europe: Democracy is cool. The mohawk-clad russian-german DJ and rapper has made a hard pumping eurotechno-anthem to put some color on the runup to the EP elections. The music-video contains sexy parliamen tarian-dancers, European Union-hotpants and an electric violin. [...]
The project is quite unique in that it is a european citizens attempt to reach out to all young people of the union with the message that voting on the 7th of june is important. According to alarming reports, a big portion of european youth are not even aware that the election is taking place or when.
Further information, the song as mp3 download and some pictures can be found on his website www.djtrexx.eu.
Some time ago I’ve put a video on this blog that we (Les Jeunes Européens, JEF) made for the European elections next week. Since then many people fortunately liked the idea and forwarded the video. Thank you for that! But we haven’t been lazy during the last weeks and tried to improve it. After having cut it to a shorter version first, we added subtitles for different languages now. Unfortunately we couldn’t translate it to every European language as the video is just small project we did during a seminar weekend in Paris (with the help of the French Foundation of Political Innovation). Sorry for that.
Nevertheless please find here some subtitled versions:
Dailymotion where we host the videos does unfortunately not allow subtitles for Bulgarian, Estonian, Hungarian and Slovak. (Which is by the way scandalous!) Therefore, these subtitles can only be found on youtube. Click on the arrow on the bottom-right to choose a subtitle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_lqRyuXkk
Since the elections to the European Parliament (4-7 June) are only a few days away it’s just about time to once again have a quick look at what the EU citizens are actually voting for this year. Here is a nice video that a friend of mine just posted on facebook (Thanks Laura, very viral). Also there is a nice Austrian extended version in German language here.
Weil doch heute Europatag ist, poste ich hier nochmal eines meiner liebsten Europavideos “Kinderleicht – Die europäische Werte“. Das ist auf jeden Fall einfacher zu verdauen, als die Schuman-Erklärung, die am 09. Mai 1950 Europa als Gemeinschaft ja irgendwie ins Rollen brachte.