This is the common blog of the Web Communication Unit of the European Parliament, but you knew that already, didn’t you? On this page, we will introduce ourselves to you. Let’s shake hands, by alphabetical order.
Anete
Anete is our Latvian editor. She covers Agriculture, Fishery, Employment and Social affairs together with Leszek and Manja. Her office is next to Eirini’s, who prepares really weird Greek coffees. Anete prefers tea, thank you very much.
See all Anete’s posts.
Asta
Asta- our lithuanian supporting editor, who says she has a nickname “slyva”, that means plum in lithuanian. The roots go to the principle of the “kinder surprise”, you bite the fruit, or crack the egg and you never know what surprise is hiden for you. Your homework is to find the right tool or key to the moody-fruity Legoland:)
See all Asta’s posts
Bárbara
Bárbara comes from Madrid – Parisian girls can start to worry, Barbara knows what fashion means. She used to be the youngest of the team, but since then Florent has arrived and things will never be the same.
See all Barbara’s posts.
Christian
Our German editor is an information freak. He knows all data, all sources, all facts. He double-checks every single synopsis. He cannot live without 17 open Word documents, 27 open tabs and 66 on-going e-mails. Then his computer crashes, ah ah !
See all Christian’s posts.
Cristina
There are two Cristinas, one with a C, one with a K. She’s the C. Cristina writes in Romanian but also monitors the stats. She knows what you’ve done last time you visited our main website and she tells us.
See all Cristina’s posts.
David
David our English Editor is a long-standing member of the team. For the purposes of this blog his main interests are international relations and the history of European integration.
See all David’s posts.
Evita
She’s Steve’s right arm. She makes sure he is where he should be, at the right time in the right meeting room. She also provides the team with Feng-Shui advice, colour theories (“I feel purple today” – er, sure) and super smart tricks (“Why don’t you write it down so you won’t forget?”). Damn she’s good !
See all Evita’s posts.
Florent
Mesdames et messieurs, Florent belongs to an old and rough tradition of sailors, coming from the far west of France. Just give him the direction and he will navigate there… Even if it’s on the web!
See all Florent’s posts.
Fred
“I’m one these guys who put colours on the webpages. And yes, I’m a pixel freak.” says Fred. He doesn’t belong to our Unit but he does belong to our team. He’s the keeper of the graphical charter of the EP’s website. Now, that’s a serious job.
See all Fred’s posts.
Hannariikka
She’s the living proof of a talkative Finn – and likes to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Apt for a communication pro, sure – yet not everybody shares her craving for backgrounds and contexts. But she is authorised to write headers and titles longer than the others. For example, “Ajankohtaista” means “News”. And, now, Fred has to design a banner the same size as others with that. Hanna never says no to bubbles.
See all Hannariikka”s posts.
Hanneke
Hanneke, the Dutch language editor, has turned the reconciliation of professional and private life into art.
See all Hanneke’s posts.
Josh
His real name is Jozef, so you know, and he’s from Slovakia. He follows the Plenary and every tennis tournament at the same time on the same screen, which sometimes leads to confusion. What? Federer has voted the Service directive in two sets?
See all Josh’s posts.
Karim
Karim is busy writing this three lines self-description. Why don’t you come back a bit later, when it will be ready?
See all Karim’s posts.
Kostas
Before joining us as a Greek editor, Kostas was a Brussels correspondent for years. He knows the place better than any of us, gets all political gossips before everyone and finds his new job easier because it’s a team job.
See all Kostas’ posts.
Kristiina
Whenever you need energy, pass by her office. Estonian people could well be the warmest of the Baltics, if you judge by her smile.
See all Kristiina’s posts.
Kurt
Kurt is from Malta. When he’s not making or listening to bleeps and beats, scratching his head at contemporary art or films he believes are way too long, supporting atrocious Belgian third division football teams, quad biking, wandering around cities and/or forests or evangelically trying to turn people on to HBO’s ‘The Wire’ he’ll be hard at work. Or daydreaming. Or both.
See all Kurt’s posts.
Lena
Our Swedish editor, Lena, is a synopsis super-pro, a pro-gender equity, an equitable colleague, a league of honour in team building, a ding-a-dong song by Abba, yes, I made it up!
See all Lena’s posts.
Leszek
Leszek would like you to know that there is no cat in the famous Christmas stew all Polish grandmothers cook during wintertime. No cat. Just rabbit. Stop asking.
See all Leszek’s posts.
Marie-Claire
As a Maltese editor, Marie-Claire writes in the most beautiful graphic language: Għix ħajtek: tgħid taxxi iktar għolja jgħinu fil-ġlieda kontra t-tipjip fl-UE? I have no idea, I’ll leave it to you.
See all Marie-Claire’s posts.
Martina
This Slavic girl of German appearance is undoubtedly the most organized person ever. She has just a file for everything, even for the well-tried cooking recipes:) After some short trips she has finally returned back to secure waters of the EP administration. She has surely enriched our cool team of web-blog geeks….
See all Martina’s posts.
Mindaugas
“Yes, I know, sometimes the music coming out of my office is too loud, but it’s all for the sake of enhancing creativity. For obvious reasons will have to take a few dB down after moving to the 2nd floor though… glad to be part of the coolest team :)” says Mindaugas, our Lithuanian editor.
See all Mindaugas’ posts.
Nadina
Nadina belongs to the editorial coordination, but she also writes in Romanian and she writes synopsis too. She’s assigned to various tasks, some of them boring, others super boring, others you cannot even imagine. She also says thing three times. “Good good good”. “No no no”. “What what what?” Nobody knows why why why.
See all Nadina’s posts.
Nicolas
Nicolas belongs to the same Unit as Fred but we still consider him as part of our team. He’s a functional analyst. The job covers two main tasks: 1°) to answer “No” to all our requests for developments of new features on the website and 2°) to go and tell the IT team he said no. Then, they drink home-made beers and play videogames.
Nicolas hasn’t posted anything yet.
Olav
As a Danish editor, Olav makes sure there is nothing rotten in his own editorial kingdom. His name has only four letters, but very few manage to pronounce it correctly.
See all Olav’s posts.
Pavel
Our Czech editor speaks thirteen languages, including whispering to horses. He juggles with balls and is a super cook. Close to be the perfect man, he is of course married and a happy father. Always the same with perfect men.
See all Pavel’s posts.
Petra
Editorial coordinator, she demonstrates she has patience by the barrel when confronted with some demands from editors. She’s also in charge of EP Live, where you can find videos, streamings and multimedia products.
Petra hasn’t published anything yet.
Peter
Peter is our Hungarian editor. He’s an accomplished swimmer and practices at lunch time, which makes it difficult to share a meal with him. Especially if you don’t like soaked food. When it comes to drinking, he drops water for good tasty red wine, which confirms one should not drink what he swims in, as one Hungarian proverb says.
See all Peter’s posts
Pietro
Our talented photographer illustrates most of our stories. When it’s not a photo by him, he found it for us. His job is quite tough because there aren’t so many ways of taking pictures of people wearing gray suits in meeting rooms. Try, you’ll see.
See all Pietro’s posts.
Raffaella
Calabrian by birth, Milanese by adoption and in Brussels for passion, Raffaella is the Italian web editor for the European Parliament. She changed several jobs in the last few years: after being assistant to an MEP, she worked as press officer in Italy and then as lobbyist for the European railways association… but the Parliament remained her old love and she is enthusiast of having the possibility to work in the most challenging area for the EU future: “communicating Europe”.
See all Raffaella’s posts.
Sofia
Sofia is our Portuguese editor. Studies: journalism (specialisation in legal journalism), languages. She loves music, sun, beautiful beaches, taking pictures, watching movies, meeting friends and go for parties. She played tennis for a long time, but she had to give up after seriously breaking her right wrist. She still knows how to smash the ball back though.
See all Sofia’s posts.
Steve
Steve is the oldest member of the team (it’s a young team!) and answers occasionally – and reluctantly – to “boss”. These days, he counts as an old hand, but one who has rediscovered his youthful enthusiasm, thanks to the wierd and wonderful world of the web. He is beginning to obsess about blogs, comments, tweets, social networks and all the rest of it. A sad case…
See all Steve’s posts.
Svetla
Svetla is our Bulgarian editor. She sometimes complains that, after one year in Brussels, she has not met a real Belge yet. As a journalist, she worked, in chronologically order, for a newspaper; a news agency; a Radio; a TV and now for a web page. Is that a sign of progress?
See all Svetla’s posts.
Tibo
Tibo is the editorial coordinator. Nobody really understands what that means but, man, he does send a lot of e-mails, tables, schedule and stuff to the team. He likes to write on online trends, process, workflows and all that sexy kind of subjects. When he is not bothering the editors, he relaxes by bothering his cat.
See all Tibo’s posts.
Follow him on Twitter.
You can see the team in action in our self promoting videos on Vimeo.
Trainees
Indre
Indre is one of our new trainees in the Unit, coming from Lithuania. She enjoys singing…some jazz, classical and folk music and walking in unknown cities. So far she’s just landed in our unit but we don’t know yet if it means she’s lost..
Lady
Congolese, yet born in Belgium and owner of Swedish passport, Lady France is our stagiaire for the next four months. She is working on different projects, research on various new topics and synopsis writing together with editors. She likes reading, singing gospel and is really scared of cats, because in Africa they are always related to witchcraft.
Lelde
From Riga, Lelde is our Latvian trainee. She admires sportsmen and people who speak many languages, so she came to the right place. Especially for the languages. She is addicted to Coca Cola, junk food and internet, as bad it could sound. Though communication graduate, she says she doesn’t like talking, we will see…
Our trainees also sometimes post on this blog, and so do some colleagues from other editorial teams – we call them our “Guest bloggers” and we introduce them in the first paragraph of their post.
There are also some major characters we should mention. They aren’t in the list above because they decided to leave to where the grass is greener. Marie, for example, the former right-hand of Steve, is now in Ireland – tell her about green grass. Andrea, ex-Italian editor, works at the Commission. Gaëlle, French editor for years, now works at the BBC where she can bash us even more than when she was working with us. Anna, our first Bulgarian editor, joined the Patliament’s library. Kristine, who was our Danish editor, has succumbed to the call of love - we couldn’t hold her back. Eirini, our long time Greek editor and internal paparazzi, now cooks her strange coffee for better educated people who really appreciate it while Manja, Slovenian editor for years, has decided to go and meet her audience back in Ljubljana. So has Helle, our recurrent back-up in Swedish, except she headed to Göteborg ’cause it’s a better place for practicing professional Ultimate Freesbe, or so she said. We also lost Sophie, former Fred’s sidekick, who introduced butterflies and flowers in the graphical chart of our Headlines and is now casting her spells in other digital lands.
Explaining how all the teams involved in the website of the European parliament interact, the process of technical development and all that sort of thing goes beyond the purpose of this page. We’ll leave that to a future post.
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