Europe's Politicians Embrace Web 2.0

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Eighteen months ago, Dutch politicians were reluctant to get online, says Guido Van Nispen, a leading Dutch blogger and managing partner at Amsterdam-based IT consultancy InterimIC. But with elections set for Nov. 22, "every major politician now has a Web 2.0 presence of some kind," he says. Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende blogs, and Dutch Labour leader Wouter Bos records podcasts and keeps voters up to date with his blog, Woutersweb.

Too Interactive for Germany?

The head of Holland's Socialist Party, Jan Marijnissen, goes one better: He has his own podcast studio. When Marijnissen recently attached a Web camera to his car and let viewers follow him around for a day, the resulting video footage became a hugely popular—and rather funny—viral clip in Holland. The Socialist Party even runs its own Internet service provider, open to the public, called tomatonet (yes, really, the Party's symbol is a tomato).

German politicians, however, are a bit slower than their Continental neighbors to get on the Web 2.0 wagon. In the run-up to last year's elections, most political parties and their members had Web sites and blogs. But a quick scan of Wahl.de, as a portal for politicians' blogs, shows that very few remain active. "So far, politicians' blogs have had little political impact with voters, as they tend to just recycle prepared statements instead of engaging with voters," says Nico Lumma, one of Germany's leading bloggers, who also runs Blogg.de, a Cologne-based blog-hosting site. For instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel uses her weekly podcasts to essentially regurgitate speeches or discuss noncontroversial ideas such as funding the renovation of a Berlin museum.

Another German blogging expert, Nicole Simon, reckons that German politicians' reluctance to embrace new media is a cultural issue. "People don't mind listening to podcasts but they don't like the interactivity of blogs."

Not Without Pitfalls

And there are still politicians who are struggling to get it right. When former French Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin wanted to discuss his thoughts on Europe's relations with China, he did a podcast. But the massive red tome titled "La Chine" he used as a prop sparked more giggles than debate.

In Holland, the initial attempt at blogging by the leader of the Green Party, Femke Halsema, backfired. After getting nasty posts from right-wing bloggers, she decided to stop communicating. Her silence further enraged the posters who proceeded to deluge her blog. Her response: a link on her Web site called Fem Fem (a play on the satellite navigational system Tom Tom) that lets people download her voice into their car's navigational system. Well, it's still the early days.

Capell is a senior writer in BusinessWeek's London bureau.