Dominic's Blog

The race is just starting for the European Elections of 2019. Parties across Europe are now in the process of choosing who to put forward as candidates for the European Parliament. Backroom staff have commenced the process of drafting European-wide manifestos. Another key issue for the parties is to decide on who will be the party’s lead candidate for the President of the Commission, the SpitzenKandidat. The current Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, is the first Commission President to be chosen based on the SpitzenKandidat system. Introduced as part of the Lisbon Treaty, the Spitzenkandidat concept is that the European-wide political party which gains the highest number of seats at the European Parliamentary elections then has its lead candidate ratified as Commission President by the Union’s Heads of States. Last time around in 2014 the European Peoples Party (EPP) gained the highest number of seats in the European Parliament. Their Spitzenkandidat, Jean-Cla

 It’s 50 years since 1968, one of the most turbulent years in the world’s recent history. It saw the Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong, the assassinations of the Reverend Martin Luther King and of Robert Kennedy, and the continuation of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In Europe we saw the Prague Spring in what was then Czechoslovakia. All of these contributed to inspire the world’s oppressed to campaign for change. Closer to home it was a key year in the history of Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association organised its first march from Coalisland to Dungannon and then later that year held a second march in Derry. The marchers set out to highlight non-sectarian demands, such as the end of gerrymandering of constituency boundaries and better housing for all sections of the population. Tragically, subsequent events brought the north to a deeper, darker place for the following decades. It was only when all sides of the conflict saw the futi