A scoop with Taylor Swift

By Georgi Gotev | @GeorgiGotev

There is a lot of talk these days about how much pop megastar Taylor Swift could influence US politics. Some even say she could be the kingmaker.

Swift set another record on Sunday (4 February), winning the Grammy award for ‘Album of the Year’ for an unprecedented fourth time, eclipsing music legends Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder, who have each previously claimed the prize three times.

It is no secret that Swift is not indifferent to politics. In 2020, she posed for photographs distributing Biden badges.

Swift’s fans call themselves Swifties. Reportedly, Swifties democrats dream of the megastar’s official endorsement of Biden.

A recent opinion poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies shows that 18% of US voters would align their choice for president with Taylor Swift’s.

The singer’s endorsement appears to impact younger Americans the most, with approximately three in 10 voters under 35 saying they would vote for a Swift-approved candidate.

We can take polls made 10 months before the election with a pinch of salt, but 18% is not a small number, especially if those are voters who would otherwise abstain.

There are Swifties also in the European Commission.

The US diva will bring her blockbuster “Eras Tour” to Paris on 9 May, a month before voters in the EU’s 27 nations head to the polls to elect the next European Parliament lawmakers.

Today's edition is powered by Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

Germany will abstain from another EU transport law, despite initially signalling agreement, an industry source told Euractiv, as the liberal FDP party is blocking the agreement to the proposed new CO2 standards for trucks which would see the number of diesel trucks drastically reduced.

In a major blow to the EU’s Green Deal and Farm to Fork framework, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday that she will withdraw the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR), which sought to halve pesticide use by 2030.

The European Commission presented its recommendations for the EU’s 2040 climate target on Tuesday, arguing for a 90% cut in emissions compared to 1990, and paving the way for carbon capture technology to abate remaining emissions from industry.

Representatives of the EU Council, Commission, and Parliament agreed on a compromise text of the Gigabit Infrastructure Act: the tacit approval remains a voluntary principle while the abolition of intra-EU communication ‘surcharges’ is set for 2029-2032.

The European Parliament will replace the manual registration of lawmakers’ attendance with a system based on scanning their badges and, on a voluntary basis, fingerprints, according to document about a bureau meeting on Monday, seen by Euractiv.

Turkey’s government is scrambling to prove it has fulfilled promises to re-home victims of a devastating earthquake from February 2023. But a year on, survivors are still in temporary housing, facing the prospect of having to buy their potential new homes.

Last but not least, check out this week’s Transport Brief: The final stretch of legislative work in Brussels.

Look out for….

• European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg, Monday-Thursday.
• Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis participates in second European Investment Bank Group Forum on Wednesday.
• Informal meeting of competitiveness ministers (Internal market and industry) on Thursday-Friday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]