Today I’m at #ForumRhinMeuse - organised by Grand Est and hosted at the Baden-Württemberg representation in Brussels
Pictures of politicians hanging up at venues is always… well, is sort of weird for me. Here Winfried Kretschmann is at the entrance
Apparently there are bilingual official hashtags - #frm23 and #rmf23. But I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on Mastodon here - so I’m sticking to #ForumRhinMeuse which I think makes more sense for my followers!
Winfried Hermann opening the #ForumRhinMeuse at the BaWü Vertretung in Brussels
The event is in German, French, English and Dutch - but I’ll try to toot in English
Hermann saying the aims of European transport policy - to decarbonise - are right. But reality of the policies don’t match the aims. On that he’s right! #ForumRhinMeuse
Ooops. Hermann talking about how countries need to take Trans European Networks seriously. Rebuilding the Mannheim-Basel TEN rail corridor to make it 4 tracks throughout is 30 years late, and it’s all in Baden-Württemberg…
Now Hermann is talking about missing railway links. For railways he cites Freiburg-Colmar (that I visited last year during #CrossBorderRail ). But it’s far from the only problem with rail connections at the France-Germany.
And now it’s Anne Sander MEP talking - President of Grand Est - Europe. She’s reading her speech and it’s pretty boring so far.
As a politician one of the things you do most is give speeches at events. Why are so many so bad at it? If you’ve got an audience - like the 100 odd people here - then leave them with something memorable in their head afterwards!
Now Jan-Christoph Oetjen MEP talking about eFuels. Says we won’t be ready for electric cars completely by 2035. Hmmm. He’s FDP so he has to take the Wissing line I suppose.
It’s a buzzword bingo of different plans from Oetjen here. And “digitalisation” keeps cropping up all over. If he has a coherent vision here it’s not clear to me what it is.
