VEP -Virtual European Parliament

The VEP project aims as a trial project at integrating young EU citizens from 3 different regions (Lulea, Barcelona, Flanders) in the decision making process of the European Parliament. As a trial project the Virtual EP activities will run parallel with the actual agenda of the European Parliament. The young EU citizens will be able to: access relevant information via the VEP portal, share thoughts with the other participants, collaboratively write reports on specific topics and will be asked to give their opinion via mobile voting and surveying. The process is moderated by an international support office looking after the quality of all Virtual EP activities.

 During the project:

• A Virtual European Parliament Framework consisting of web 2.0 based technology and a mobile community services platform for voting, surveying, an enabling mobile access to the VEP activities will be set up;
• A trial will be set up consisting of 3 iterations. During this trial at least 600 young EU citizens will participate in the virtual EP decision making process by using the technology and information supplied by the Virtual EP Framework. For trial purposes the number of named participants is limited. But the Virtual EP activities are open to other interested people but they will not be involved in the evaluation activities;
• During the trial information feedback will be gathered from the participants regarding the technology and the added value of the Virtual EP framework and activities. Based on this information the virtual EP activities will be further optimized during the project.

• Setting up a successful “Virtual European Parliament” for political debate in EC;
• Creating motivation and engagement;
• Creating knowledge about the social processes that take place in a public room;
• Create knowledge about how to improve the legislation processes.

• The use of “Innovation Jam” like software in political and decision related environments;
• The use of MegaConferencing software (massive video-conferencing between 100-400 participants) in Virtual Parliament Sessions;
• The use of web 2.0 technology (blogging, wiki’s, tagging, …) to facilitate interaction and content gathering;
• The use of mobile technology linked to the rest of the tools for voting, contributing and opinion gathering;
• Activities in the Virtual European Parliament are synchronized with the activities in the real European parliament and follow the decision making process