Hello everyone,

While part of Amelia's work in the past week was explaining to her fellow MEPs the difference between infrastructure protection and intellectual property rights, I had the pleasure of learning about some of the European Parliament's unique infrastructure challenges first hand by accompanying Amelia to Strasbourg for the plenary week.

On Monday, June 18, along with her colleague

On Tuesday, May 29, LIBE rapporteur Jan Philipp Albrecht, MEP of the Greens/EFA group, hosted a debate on the proposed Data Protection Regulation (downloadable here).

Last sunday, the Pirate Party Germany reached another milestone. With 7.8 percent of the vote, 20 pirates are entering the parliament of Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The Pirate Party is now present in four of Germany's 16 states, having scored well above 5 percent in every election since the Berlin elections in September 2011. The 20 delegates make up the largest Pirate parliamentary group to date.

Last month, the northern German town of Neumünster saw well over 1500 pirates, as well as hundreds of press representatives and guests gather for the Pirate Party Germany's national assembly, making it the largest gathering in the history of the party. Since entering the Berlin state parliament in late 2011, the Pirate Party Germany (PP-DE) has not only doubled in size, but has also started raising international attention.

I am full member of the ITRE (industry, research, energy, formerly also transport but transport is currently in its own committee TRAN) and therefore have voting duty every time there are votes. The objects of my legislative prowess yesterday were the amendments for the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) report (see parliament dossier website).

This is an essay written by yours truly in Romanian about Hungary, to commemorate the debates in the European Parliament and international media of last week. It was actually originally written by me, but corrected by a native speaker who considered "80% of the [original] text intelligible". For Hungarian readers of this text, please see an interview with index.hu I made last year which is along these same lines.

Short version: There are transtition protocols that need to be signed before we can be MEPs. France and the UK may have almost signed by now. Belgium and Greece have still not signed. It is uncertain whether there may be additional delays until the French national elections in april 2012.