Europees Parlement opent speciale website voor verkiezingen (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As campaigns for the European Parliament elections are slowly starting to run in member states, the Brussels assembly is itself trying to attract the attention of voters with a new website launched this week.

Starting with a dynamic flash introduction accompanied by modern beats, the site offers comprehensive information about candidates, political groups and - importantly - a review of what the Parliament has actually done in the past five years.

However, the wishes of ordinary voters does not seem to have been the key consideration for the producers of the website.

Voters looking for answers to important questions such as - "Why is the European Parliament relevant" and "who am I going to vote for?" first have to pass through a wave of unasked-for technocratic information.

Fertility rates

Before entering the home page, readers are first confronted with statistical data on their own country, such the "Total fertility rate" and the "% of the population aged 25-64 having completed upper secondary education".

A list of candidates is available - but without links to candidates' websites or the parties running in each country.

Readers who click on "political groups" - to try and determine the political differences between them - may well be scared away by the "Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament".

Infotainment

The bureaucratic, reader-voter unfriendly character of the site in general has apparently tried to be compensated for in a separate "infotainment" section, where an overload of modern communication strategies has been applied.

Users can discover the European Parliament through a "thrilling" weekly updated comic story on life in the parliament.

Protagonists says things like, "We'll be getting the Council's common position soon ... then things will start to hot up" or "I seem to spend my whole life on the train between Brussels and Strasbourg".

In a "Europe quiz", users can play to be a candidate themselves. Travelling virtually through the European Union, they need to answer questions by virtual voters. The winner will be offered a VIP trip to Strasbourg.