Come elections, do you read the programme put forth by the candidate that you decide to vote for? Or do you rather trust your instinct and hope that the party you have a preference for matches your political views?
Voting Advice Applications (so-called VAAs) offer excellent help in doing your ‘homework’ before elections. Called also ‘political compass’, ‘electoral navigator’ or ‘party-meter’, they are online tools that help users make a choice in a given election.
In the run-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections, the EUI is working on the release of a European VAA, called EU&I. Today, the project, led by Research Fellow Lorenzo Cicchi, is launching its website which will serve as a hub for useful and engaging content before the actual app is launched on Europe Day, 9 May.
Available in over 20 languages, the tool invites users to react to 30 policy statements covering a wide range of contemporary policy issues and political values in European politics such as migration, government spending, green taxes, security and more. It then uses a mathematical algorithm to find which parties stand closest to citizens' preferences on these issues, both in their country and all across Europe.
EU&I uses a sound scientific methodology to analyse and code more than 250 parties participating in the upcoming elections. In the weeks leading up to the 2024 vote, a team of 130 scholars across Europe is meticulously researching party positions and official documentation to position the candidates according to the 30 statements in the questionnaire. To ensure the precision, the online tool will be launched a month before the elections, when all parties will have already announced their positions.
The EUI has been at the forefront of VAAs for the European elections. In 2009, EU Profiler was created: the very first transnational VAA for European elections. The initiative came from Alexander H. Trechsel, at the time director of the European Democracy Observatory (EUDO, the predecessor of EGPP) and with the strong support of the late Peter Mair. The project, under the new name of EU&I, continued in 2014 and 2019 when the record number of 1.28 million users was reached.
Learn more about this initiative of the European Governance and Politics Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre on its website.
Stay tuned and follow the project's social media channels on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky.