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Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, can only dream of having so many online fans.
The European Parliament has led the way in expanding its online presence and focusing extra attention to new media such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.
The Parliament is the only current EU institution that has a Facebook page, which it set up just prior to the European elections in June 2009, to offer a space where Europeans can debate with MEPs on political issues of the day. The site has attracted more than 76,000 fans as of July, and is expected to hit 100,000 by the end of the year, making it the world's second most popular social media site in the world run by a government or quasi-government organisation, behind the White House, which has more than 660,000 fans.
Van Rompuy can boast nearly 3,000 of his Facebook page. Barroso does not have one.
The Commission and the Council of Ministers have no new media presence beyond commissioners' blogs and online audio, photo and video feeds on the EU's Europe by Satellite website, YouTube and Flickr.
The Parliament too has its own video streaming through the EuroparlTV online audiovisual service, which was launched in 2008 amid much fanfare at a cost of €9 million a year.
MEPs asked in May for a review of the project. The web channel's goal was to showcase live coverage of meetings and professionally made video reports by contracted journalists about the Parliament's work and EU policies to bring MEPs closer to their voters. Two years on, official figures on how many people actually visit the web-television's four channels remain confidential. But officials admit that the numbers since its launch have not been impressive.
Still, they estimate some 15 million people have seen work produced by EuroparlTV, either online or via regional or national television stations that pick up stories from the service.
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