Among the innovative tools that have emerged during the campaign for European elections, EU Profiler is probably the most remarkable. Give your opinion on a thirty themes of political debate and the system tells you the party you are closest to the European level as in your country. One month after its launch, EU Profiler has exceeded one million visitors
The system is free, translated into 24 languages and for all EU citizens who can define their quasi-scientific political profile. Of the thirty political assertions, twenty-eight are identical in all EU countries and two are specific to the national policy of your country. For each question, six opportunities to express his point of view, between "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree" or "no opinion". A sophisticated calculation then you located among 300 political parties in Europe.
The system raises some questions about the selection of political parties represented, as pointed out by the German portal Politik Digital in an article on the website of the pan-European network of e-participation. A necessarily subjective selection based on the number of parties in the 27 EU countries, although the designers of the system shows have been taken into account the parties likely to win seats in Parliament. But the exercise is one of the most interesting of this netcampagne 2009.
Ironically, this system is based on Swiss' "Smarvote system"and was developed under the leadership of Professor Alexander Trechsel, researcher at the prestigious European University Institute in Florence (Italy). A Swiss europhile reminiscent pertinently that the election to the European Parliament remains "the most monumental democratic exercise in the world after India. "
