SIMPLE majority in the 56-member House of Representatives will be required for approval of the government bill on the deposits haircut. However the numbers simply do not add up to a majority.  If all members are present and voting, a simply majority means 29 votes

Under the best case scenario the government would have 26 deputies backing its bill:

Diko (President's party) 20 + Diko 4 + European Party 2= 26

Parties that would vote against:

Diko 4 + AKEL 19 + EDEK 5 + Green Party 1 + Independent Deputy 1= 30

Today the Cypriot Parliament is due to vote on the terms of the bailout package. But the NO is still not out of question. The Democratic Rally (DISY) and the Democratic Party (DIKO), the parties which supported President Anastasiades in his recent election, do not have a majority- only 28 out of 56 MPs. AKEL, the main left opposition party which has 19 MPs has said it will vote against the package, while DIKO has recently seen at least one MP who does not support Anastasiades split off.

Ronald Reagan was a born leader. Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Reagan's political soul mate once said "Being in power is like being a lady. If you have to remind people that you are, you aren't not. Reagan never hand to remind people he was in power because he had something many powerful people do not: authority. And he had authority because he knew how to lead. Reagan knew that you manage things and you can lead people. He knew that leadership is not about the self, but is about self-sacrifice.

All the leading credit agencies have slashed Cyprus’s credit rating.  Standard and Poors dropped it to BBB last October, citing among other things the island nation’s exposure to Greek sovereign debt as cause for concern.

AALEP has been invited to participate as guest in the 3rd meeting of the Public Affairs Community in Europe (P.A.C.E.). After Rome and Madrid, this year’s meeting is organized in Paris on 24 and 25 May by the Association Française des Conseils en Lobbying (AFCL)

P.A.C.E. is a common platform for European Public Affairs professionals and lobbyists. The P.A.C.E. provides support, networking and intelligence to EU and country-based Public Affairs professionals and aims to set up the grounds for a European identity for Public Affairs professionals.

Croatia is set for EU entry on 1st July 2013. Is the Croatian administration and the private sector prepared for abosrbing the EU structural and cohesion funds (SCF) that it will gain access to after accession?

In 2012 output was 1.76 million pages. Of this 76% was done in-house and the rest was done by contractors (translation companies and freelance translators. A page is 1 500 typed characters not including spaces.

DG Translation's workload is steadily rising, because of the constant expansion in the Commission's areas of activity and since more official EU languages have been added. With Croatia the EU will count 24 languages.

The cost of translation is estimated at € 300 million a year or some € 0.60 for every citizen.

Politicians have asserted for years that the EU's acquis communautaire- the body of EU legislation which European companies, charities and individuals have to comply with is roughly 80,000 pages long. However, if you total up pages in the many volumes of the EU's Official Journal of legislation, you will find that the EU has passed a staggering 666,879 pages of law since its inception in 1957. If you research the EU's legislative database Eur-lex, you will find that 26% of all EU regulations passed since 1957 are still active.

Consultation has been described as 'a second order of citizen engagement' that aims to include the interests of the addressees of policies and/or for the general public in the decision-making process. However, the decision-making process remains in the hands of politicians. The traditional green and white paper mechanisms, exposure drafts of legislation, focus groups and surveys are familiar ways of gathering citizens' views about particular initiatives. On legislative or policy matters affecting citizens at large, plebiscites may also be used.

We're now the ASSOCIATION OF ACCREDITED PUBLIC POLICY ADVOCATES TO THE EUROPEAN UNION but keeping the acronym and logo 'AALEP' in order to maintain the brand name continuity because it has gained worldwide recognition over the years.