The focus this time is much broader and goes beyond Europe, however,  from a European perspective it would be very interesting to have someone covering EU climate change policy and  looking at how the EU  approaches the COP 15 negotiations in Copenhagen…

Check out the details:

TH!NK2 Climate Change is a 3 month blogging competition with a focus on UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) in December 2009. 81 bloggers from Europe with featured guests from India, China Brazil and the USA, representing the world’s biggest players in climate policy, will come together on the European Journalism Centre‘s thinkaboutit.eu platform, to exchange ideas and debate the issues of climate change.

Participants are encouraged to report about stories in their own back yards; to bring out the local side of a global issue. The aim is to create a portal into the minds of 81 people, to show how each one experiences the effects of Climate Change policies every day.

Go to the official website to find out more!

After creating a special page on the EP portal, dedicated to the elections, this week a new project was launched. This time, the target group is very well delimited- it is the “MTV generation”. And yes, believe it or not, the European Commission teamed up with MTV on a campaign entitled “Can You Hear Me Europe”, aiming to engage young people to express their views on Europe. MTV has been running campaigns on political and social issues in the US and also on the national level, in various countries. The first one on a European level, this initiative promises to be a channel by means of which European youth can get their thoughts and ideas on Europe and the EU across. The campaign brings together “traditional” media – MTV- with some of the biggest and most popular social networks (such as Facebook and Twitter), with the purpose of opening up the debate to young voters, by making, at the same time, the European arena more appealing to them, although it remains to be seen whether turnout icreases with this campaign.  In other words, the European Commission, in its continuous drive towards communicating the EU better, went a step further and brought the EU debate, officially, in the virtual space used by young people in their every day life. It is not a completely new thing, as many Commissioners and MEPs have already established their presence in the blogosphere and, most recently, on Twitter; nevertheless, the “Can You Hear Me Europe” campaign shows a more focused effort, addressing a specific target group in the context of a specific event: the EP elections. As we all know, the more targeted a communication effort is, the better the results, so we’ll definitely keep an eye on the developments.

Alongside this specific campaign, it is interesting to observe and compare the multitude of (mostly) internet-based initiatives linked to the EP elections in June. While not directly initiated (but in some cases and to some extent funded) by the EU, they involve Universities or academics, “think tanks”, consultancies and journalists. The unifying point is that they all aim, on the one hand, at informing an raising awareness about the importance of the EP and of the elections and, on the other hand, at engaging people to vote. Here are some of the prominent examples:

• on the more academic side: Predict09.eu, launched this week, is a statistical tool devised by three leading political scientists, to predict the outcome of the EP elections in June 2009; EU Profiler, a project led by the  European University Institute in Florence to be launched (rather late) at the end of April, is meant to help people position themselves from a political perspective, which would arguably facilitate their choice in the elections.
• on the more journalistic side: the Th!ink About It competition, whereby the European Journalism Centre (EJC) engaged bloggers from the 27 Member States in a debate on the EP elections, and EUdebate2009, a multilingual website launched by cafebabel.com, giving the chance to different actors, from citizens and civil society organisations to political parties and candidates, to have their say.

The trend shown by these developments is undoubtedly a positive one. However, one cannot help noticing that all these campaigns, even though mostly involving grassroots elements, are initiated, designed and/or funded at the EU level.  And even though they have indeed the potential to develop a so-much-sought-for European public sphere, it is questionable how efficient they will be without real ownership at the national and local level. Moreover, what is needed is a public debate on the EU that will continue also after the EP elections.

Will the “normal citizen” be swept away by the fever of the first “online elections”, like in the US, or will these initiatives remain barely the online face of what is being perceived as EU propaganda?

Anyway, the big story for the EU blogosphere this week is the “successful hijacking” (in a positive sense!) of New Europe, a weekly newspaper that is seen as the main rival to European Voice. Your humble author played a little role in this and this blog was also mentioned in the editorial. The complete print version of New Europe can be found as an pdf file here.

The buzz around the EU blogosphere last week inspired New Europe to publish the editorial on The future of the EU blogosphere which is worth reading. Of course the launch of our bloggingportal was covered as well as with a full page article Political EU Blogs at your fingertips, Bloggingportal.eu launched. (with pictures in the print edition). And that is not all, Jon managed to get the strategically important last page of the paper with the Anyone but Barroso campaign and an article on David Cameron and the EPP issue.

On a different note: We are very pleased with the launch of bloggingportal.eu and we are looking forward to your suggestions how to improve the portal. We also have a facebook group, so feel free to join and make it even more popular by inviting your friends! Since it is quite a grassroot initative with only a handful of people involved and without any sponsers or institutions, things can take a bit longer but we try to be as efficient as possible. And of course we are still looking for editors in order to cover as many languages as possible! In case you have not noticed I also integrated the editors’ choice in the sidebar of this blog!

Th!nk about it has launched as well, the EJC powered EU blogging competition. The kick-off event in Brussels last week was quite a success and there was a lot of enthusiasm about blogging about the EU and the EP elections (sounds stange but it is true!). It is an interesting mix of new and experienced bloggers which should make it a good read. So make sure you check it regularly!

As some of you know, I am involved in the organisation/develpment of both projects (bloggingportal & thinkaboutit) so I am a bit biased here