On 2nd February, Birgitta Ohlsson, Swedish MP for ELDR member party, Folkpartiet Liberalerna, was appointed as Sweden’s new Minister for European Affairs, replacing Cecilia Malmström who will be sworn in next week as the European Commissioner for Home Affairs. Another liberal taking up an important post is Meglena Kuneva who, when her mandate ends next week as European Commissioner for Consumer Affairs, is set to take over as the head of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers, the European Commission’s in-house think-tank that advises the Commission president and commissioners on three main policy areas: political, economic and societal.

Madame Antoinette Spaak delivered her farewell speech from politics in front of the Belgian Parliament last week. One of the most eminent Belgian liberal politicians, Mme Spaak withdraws from the political debate leaving behind a number of remarkable achievements.  After the death of her father, Prime Minister of Belgium Paul-Henri Spaak and a “pères de l'Europe”, she joined the Democratic Front of Francophones (FDF), rising to become the leader of the party from 1977 to 1982, the first Belgian woman to lead a political party. MEP for two mandates, she headed the Parliament of the French Community of Belgium from 1988 to 1992. In the 1990s, together with Jean Gol and Louis Michel, she was in the vanguard of the movement which led to the fusion of the FDF, the Liberal Reformist Party (PRL), and the Citizens' Movement for Change (MCC), to create the Mouvement Réformateur.

The British government is considering calling a referendum on replacing the “first past the post” voting system with an “alternative vote” (AV) system. The AV approach sees candidates ranked in order of preference with 50% of the votes needed to be elected. If no candidate gains a majority on first preferences, the second-preference votes of the candidate who finished last on the first count are redistributed, a process that continues until someone gets over 50 %.
A public vote on electoral reform would only be called after this year’s general election, and could potentially take place in autumn 2011. The Liberal Democrats are calling for further reform, however, and want to see the introduction of proportional representation. 

5-6 February the Centre Party of Sweden will attend the "municipal days". Approximately 500 politicians from the Centre party, reaching across all the Swedish municipalities, cities and regions will convene to discuss current political topics. The upcoming Swedish general election that will take place in October of this year will be one of the foremost issues that is discussed.

More than 500 delegates gathered last Sunday in the Palais des Congrès in Liège, approuving  «l'Appel Réformateur» titled Mieux, pour Tous (Better for all). The text took benefit from more than 3000 amendments from the local sections, federations, activists of Mouvement réformateur (MR) and represents the unquestioned values of MR, put together by the General Rapporteur Richard Miller.  Didier Reynders ,  MR president, said : ‘the project will be submitted to other internal discussions in view of a final texte for the Congress’.
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Nick Clegg, leader of the UK Liberal Democrats, stated on Monday that his party would fund extra tuition and reduce class sizes in schools. Clegg commented, "I think what we want, as we try and get out of this recession and rebuild a country which is fairer, is a school system that gives every single child a chance to get ahead, to live out their dreams, to fulfill their potential, irrespective of where they live, irrespective of where they were born,"  The Liberal Democrats are the only party in the UK that believes university education should be free and that everyone who has the ability should be able to go to university and not be put off by the cost.

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