My Week Ahead

Now and then I get mild complaints that my blog doesn't really say what I'm doing. Most blogs have more of a personal touch - this one tends to be more focused on the substance of politics.

Since more than a decade back I have been writing a more or less weekly newsletter distributed to a fairly wide audience over the Internet. The limitation has been that they have been in Swedish, but they have included a fair amount of what I have been doing in different respects.

With the blog being more important, the frequency of the newsletter has declined dramatically. In a way, my blog entries are on their way to replace the newsletter, although it will never be the same. The readership is also very different.

Today is a wonderful autumn day in Stockholm, and I have been fortunate to be here the entire last week.

Tomorrow here in Stockholm I will record the first two "dinners" to be shown by TV8 later this autumn.

We did six "Dinner with Bildt" one-hour TV programs last year for TV8, and they have since then run several times. TV8 is as close to public service TV as you get in this country, although it is private. And the program is really a dinner conversation with interesting people on an interesting subject.

The programs were evidently so popular that TV( felt that they had to insist that I should continue with some more, and I have agreed although it has been somewhat difficult to fit into my schedule. And the first two of the planned six new dinners are recorded tomorrow.

As for the subjects and the guests - let's return to that later.

On Tuesday I'm off to Washington for an informal meeting on trans-Atlantic issues that occurs twice every year, once in Europe and once in Washington. It's a very good group, consisting of people both in and out of office, which over the years have engaged in very open debates on the most critical issues of the day.

And there will certainly not be a shortage of subjects this meeting either.

We meet just outside of Washington, but late Wednesday afternoon I go in town in order to join former Congressman Lee Hamilton in delivering the two keynote speeches at this years main meeting of the Transatlantic Policy Network. TPN is a gathering that brings together members of the US Congress with members of the European Parliament, although it is well attended also by members of the adminitration. As such, it is a most useful forum for dialogue.

TPN goes on until Friday afternoon, but by that time I must already be back in Stockholm on other issues.

Another trans-Atlantic week, as you can see.