This conference is one of the first opportunities for citizens, civil society groups and academics to feed into the Commission’s thinking on democracy in Europe under Lisbon.

A somewhat overlooked part of the Lisbon Treaty is the European citizens’ initiative, offering the general public the opportunity to invite the European Commission to consider any legislation which has the backing of more than one million signatories. Could this be just the beginning of greater direct democracy in Europe?

It looks likely that the next European Commission will have even less women than the previous one. European Alternatives launches a campaign for greater gender equality based on more democracy at the European level. Beyond the statistics, let’s create a democratic Europe!

20 leaders meeting in Singapore cannot steal a decision from the world. Climate change is the most spectacular of demonstrations of the desperate need for a new paradigm of global decision making, intrisically based on multilateralism and reasoning across national interest.

Le Monde and the EU Observer dated this week report on the latest meeting of EU finance ministers on the issue of paying for adaptation actions to tackle climate change in developing countries. This question is likely to be central to the negotiations on climate change policy action at the next United Nations Copenhagen Summit from 7th to 18th December 2009.

On the 3 of September, Jose Manuel Barroso has presented its political guidelines for the next commission, which describe his ambitions for the European Union for the next five years and his vision for Europe.

Jean Quatremer points to the Socialist Group who fought against Barroso’s re-election on the next 16th of July 2009 in the newly elected European Parliament. Socialists would be now agreeing with a vote to take place a fortnight before the second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty on the 2nd of October 2009. Such an agreement is simply allowing a majority of the European Parliament to vote for Barroso …

As the beginning of a programme to “internally distribute refugees” between European member states, which will soon be promoted by the European Commission, France is about to welcome a hundred or so refugees from the Horn of Africa.

In an unprecedented move Jose Barroso has written a letter to the members of the European Council of member states laying out his agenda if he is to be re-elected as Commission President. The letter, addressed to the current Czech president of the European Council Jan Fischer, is available to be downloaded as a pdf from the commission website.

The victory of the European People’s Party at the European parliamentary elections does not guarantee a majority of the votes for Barroso whose renewal as president of the European Commission is supported by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.