Originally called EUwatch – European Citizen Information Hub
EUwatch original ambition in 2012 was to setup a European network of citizens in 28 members states, able to cover, analyse and amplify the 2014 European Elections from their citizen perspective. It soon became another ambition drawback because of the difficulty to find 28 Europeans, with a lot of free time, passion for European Politics and the will to spend the months leading to the European Election working on this project. Without any funds, subsidies or support, it quickly became impossible to realize the ideas of this project.
After the European Elections, the Twitter newsbot was about to be taken down but friends and colleagues working in the EU Bubble convinced me to let it run and use the audience created from scratch to amplify civil society campaigns, protests and issues but at the European level.
Just to be able to put in place this monitoring tool/media/amplifier, a set of research, analysis and mapping needed to done :
- Research & Mapping of existing EU institutions websites, accounts, pages and overall communication infrastructure.
- Research & Mapping of EU policy impact in different EU members states
- Mapping existing EU Media landscape
- Mapping existing NGO’s/CSO’s in Brussels and beyond
- Amplifying critical citizens opinions while avoiding euro-sceptics and Brexit
In the first years, before Brexit & Trump, EUwatch was pretty much a information relay with some occasional support of civil society organization campaigns (TTIP, Climate etc..)
But the project wasn’t opinionated, until Brexit enfolded and Trump became US President ; that changed everything, suddenly it was a question of survival of Democracy as we knew them (even if flawed, fragiles and in some cases utterly broken) But it was question of integrity, empathy and democracy to amplify the terrible plight of the Refugees, Climate issues, Trade issues, Representative Democracy issues, counter lobbying big pharma & big industry and ultimately counter lobbying big tech business.
With over 2 million impressions per month and growing, EUwatch has been used ever since to amplify the lost causes right in the middle of the EU brussels Bubble.
