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Tell Barroso What?



What would you ask José Manuel Durão Barroso, the current President of the European Commission? I came across the site http://www.tellbarroso.eu/ - a great example of EU politics coming up with a website, and an opportunity to put EU Internet into good use... there is also a facebook group but with very little support, given that we are talking about the EU. The "Tell Barroso" website an initiative by the Centre for European Studies asks all Europeans to answer: How can the EU improve your life?

All in all the website is not anything spectacular and the multimedia and communications team at the EU Commission could definitely have done a better job in engaging with the citizens of the EU and creating a community like website that users can interact and co-operate with one another. Instead the site just asks vague open ended questions like What areas affecting your daily life should the EU focus its energies on? they urge people to think of as many issues as come to their mind; and there is a dartboard to pin point the most important issues...

Nevertheless, they will invite 10 randomly selected participants of the tellBarroso.eu poll to meet Barroso in May 2009 in Brussels.

Clearly you can see the difference between President Obama and President Barroso. (even in their Internet Strategy). Can EU Leaders handle citizen engaged politics? do we (as Europeans) even care?

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