Tweets of the Week: Super League, Climate Law, Merkel Succession

Football’s all about money, wow, big shock, EU has a climate law, please don’t mock, and might German Greens stand a chance with Frau Baerbock?

This week we are supported by Medicines for Europe, more about them, later on. 

12 of Europe’s biggest football clubs announced they want to make a private little league this week where they only play each other to earn loads more money.

And they all took an absolute pasting for it.

It didn’t take long before the clubs backed down.

 

Well that was a wild 48 hours… 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

All six EPL clubs have officially withdrawn from the #SuperLeague said Darren McCaffrey

Herny mance piped up saying he’s enjoying the Super League’s new knockout format 

While some of us were watching attentively, others were NOT enjoying football’s Twitter takeover.

And in the Brussels bubble, for some, it was all too much.

 

After having spent months trying to understand what a pandemic is and how vaccines work, I finally feel I can talk with some confidence about the politics of it and *now* I have to become an expert on football. Tweeted an exasperated Camino Mortera.

It’s OK, It’s over Zach Meyers reassured her.

The Berlaymonster saw the league’s fault immediately: See, what the European Super League got wrong is they didn’t follow the European Way.

First you hold a series of consultations and dialogues, then a conference or convention, then a full legislative procedure with ratification, and only *then* do you change absolutely nothing.

Sad to hear about this super league business but hope we can put it behind us and all come together to enjoy the entirely unproblematic World Cup in Qatar.

Yep – no questions about that one either…

 

Here in Brussels there was a classic, last minute, middle of the night rush to get a deal binding the EU to be climate neutral by 2050 – it arrived in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

We have a deal on the Climate Law! Tweeted European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans at 5:05am – accompanied by up-the-nose kind of selfie your Mum might send you.

Ewa Krukowska said It’s the 11th hour of negotiations on #EUClimateLaw. After 11 years of covering EU climate policies I should have gotten used to late night trilogue deals but…

We never do Ewa…We never do…

 

As expected, political reactions popped up immediately.

A standard “Historical agreement” from EPP MEP Peter Liese.

True to form, the Greens thought the deal lacked ambition.

 

Breaking:#EUClimateLaw decided.

 Big disappointment! Said Michael Bloss

Renew’s Pascal Canfin said the Parliament wanted to go further but called the deal a good compromise.

The Council and Parliament had to get the deal done before the US President’s leaders summit on climate.

Le Chou broke the news of Biden’s actual plan. It involves Herding Humanity Onto a Giant Train And Doing Loops Around The Globe To Avoid The New Ice Age. 

First class…

This week we are supported by Medicines for Europe. You can register for their upcoming Virtual Summit on Biosimilar Medicines online.

Elsewhere this week, the race to replace Angela Merkel got serious.

With Annalena Baerbock for the first time in their history the German Greens have nominated a chancellor candidate. said Tarik Abou-Chadi.

The Greens have a real chance of leading a coalition government after the election he continued.

Merkel’s own party had a pretty tumultuous time choosing their candidate however – the leader of the CDU’s sister party, the CSU concedes tweeted Philip Olterman.

 “The die has been cast. Armin Laschet is the CDU/CSU’s chancellor candidate” he quoted Markus Soeder.

The Greens are doing the opposite of the CDU/CSU at the right time. Even on the choice of candidates they feel like a credible alternative. Well played. Said diego velazquez.

And John Cotter proved there’s always a Eurovision analogy to be found in anything. Remember when Ireland won 3 times in a row in the 1990s and then there was a rumour we intentionally lost it, so we wouldn’t have to host it again?

I bring this up, because the CDU has decided to put Armin Laschet forward as their candidate.

And Stephan Fischer helped us all out with some  German election season vocabulary: In German the process of choosing the next Chancellor candidate within a political party is called #Kanzlerkandidatenfindungsprozess or #Kanzlerkandidatinnenfindungsprozess.

Why didn’t twitter catch on in Germany asked Martini Selzermayer.

Thanks for watching this week’s episode of Euractiv’s EU Tweets of the Week.

Jennifer will be back with you next week for more snarks and larks in the Brussels twittersphere.

Ta ra.