Sir, Zum Artikel ‘Sprachgebrauch in der EU‘: Die Förderung der Mehrsprachigkeit kann ich nur befürworten. Ich möchte aber noch etwas anmerken. Man sollte auch Regionalsprachen fördern. Man sollte auch im Ausland in Schulen und anderen Einrichtungen Regionalsprachen anbieten. So werden sich Sprecher von solchen Sprachen ermutigt fühlen, wenn auch Ausländer ihre Sprache beherrschen. Welche man [...]

Sir, Regarding your article ‘EU to switch off traditional light bulbs by 2012‘: I try to be as green as the next person and understand the need to reduce the use of incandescent and halogen light bulbs. But has anyone else had the difficulties I have encountered while reading by these newer so-called efficient light [...]

Sir, Regarding your article of Wednesday 3 December 2008 entitled ‘Council of Europe slams Belgium over linguistic feud‘: Where the article mentions “persistent linguistic disputes between Flemish and French-speaking communities in the Brussels area,” it mixes up two kinds of qualifications. The communities in the – admittedly complicated – Belgian structure are officially qualified as [...]

Sir, This morning I read the article ‘Council of Europe slams Belgium over linguistic feud‘. In this article, which is available in English, French, even German, but not in Dutch (the official language in Flanders), I read about a town called ‘Crainhem’. The use of this quasi-French name (it is not even official in French) [...]

Sir, In an article published by EurActiv on 1 December, ‘Monitoring your MEP: Mission impossible?‘, it was indicated that there is very little information available on how MEPs behave inside the European Parliament. We, the founders of a new project called VoteWatchEU (to be launched on www.votewatch.eu early next year), would like to share with [...]

Sir, As a Chinese national, I am all for the Chinese government’s decision to cancel the EU-China summit. When you have a summit with a supposedly “strategic partner”, you expect to receive treatment as such. If the Europeans cannot stop their outrageous way of asking the Chinese for economic cooperation on the one hand but [...]

Sir, It is unacceptable that some Central and Eastern European countries still rank their national egoism much higher than global welfare, disregarding the fact that unlike the current financial crisis, the issue of global warming will not disappear. In fact, it will remain a long-term threat. The current situation whereby a few countries can block [...]