On the 1st of July France took the EU- Presidency from Slovenia and created a web site to inform the public about their intentions and keep them informed during the next couple of month . The page is available in French, English, Spanish, Italian, and German, on can subscribe to an RSS feed or get the latest news to your PDA.

German Constitutional Court Overturns Smoking Ban

In a not so surprising move the highest court of Germany today decided, that the rules to ban smoking in bars are unconstitutional. Under the current regulations restaurants and bars are obliged to open up separate rooms for smokers. This however was a huge disadvantage for small one room bars, as their customers weren't allowed to smoke at all.
The states now have until 2009 to redraw the rules, and remove the ban and allow smoking or totally ban smoking.

Houston, I had a problem

After trying to find interesting legal problems within the EU or Germany for a couple of days, I decided to change the theme of my blog. During the summer those people in Brussels and Strasbourg, Berlin, Madrid, London, and wherever, just don't seem to come up with a lot of things. The highest court in Germany today decides if anti-smoking laws are constitutional, but apart from this, nada. So, I globalized it. Not that I couldn't write whatever I want on my own blog :-) but I felt I should stick to the theme.

German Waters Contribute to Green Revolution

The recent changes to the German Renewable Energy Law (EEG) have sparked a green revolution off the northern coast. The EEG sets fixed rates of 15 cents per kilowatt hour (compared to 9 cents before the change) and this rate increase make an investment more interesting. For now the government envisions thousands of wind turbines in the waters with construction beginning in August. Der Spiegel has the complete article.

It's done

It is 6:46 pm on a Saturday evening and I set-up my first personal blog. I participate in the Web 2.0 Challenge through the AALL CS-SIS and one of the suggestions was to start ones own blog. So here it is.