With 43.1% participation in all 27 Member States of the European Union, abstention is the real winner of the election of the new European Parliament. This is the lowest since the Parliament is elected by direct universal suffrage. The European Parliament Communication team, led by Francesca Ratti, had yet innovated a lot for this election campaign.
The campaign launched at the European level would cost 18 million € (0.05 € per elector). Available in 23 languages across 27 countries, it was financed by the budgets of 2008 and 2009 Parliament. Following a tender, the german agency Scholz & Friends designed it.
8 different platforms were used: YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, europarltv (the Parliament webTV), the official Parliament website and the European elections website.
17 special videos have been made, 659 photos uploaded to Flickr, 2 189 tweets on Twitter (during the election night, the elections were the third most popular topic on Twitter).
50 000 fans have joined the Facebook page of the European Parliament, whose profile on MySpace had 2875 friends.
Viral video launched on YouTube have been viewed 440 000 times.
