Friday 2 October 2009

Ever tried to find the ECR Group in the European Parliament on the net?

As you may have noticed, the European Parliament has seen the birth of a new political group right of the EPP after this year's elections.

Fellow euroblogger Jon Worth landed a beautiful coup showing the lack of professionalism of this new formation that includes the British Tories (highlights by me, one link added):
"The new group took the name European Conservatives and Reformists (a contradiction in terms even in the name) but no-one thought to register any domain name for the new group before its establishment. So on 22nd June I had a look around to see what I could find – ecrg.info was still available and I purchased it and registered it with Google.

Now more than 3 months on there is still no official ECR Group website as far as I can see, and the single page of my website has risen slowly up the Google results, so much so that I’m starting to get mails via the website from all sorts of organisations asking for information about the ECR’s MEPs and positions and even asking for speakers for conferences. I’ve now politely e-mailed all of these people informing them that they are victims of cybersquatting and asking the valid question:

[H]ow can any political organisation that has gone three months without a web presence be taken at all seriously?
"
A pertinent question asked, not least since there have been doubts from the beginning whether the group would be viable at all. And at least on the net - if they don't have a website hidden somewhere where no one finds them - the group seems non-existent.

But maybe they don't care, and non-visibility is part of the Conservative-Reformist strategy? - Only time will tell...

3 comments:

Ralf Grahn said...

Julien,

Welcome to the club; the questions about the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) are well worth asking.

I remarked on the absence of the "missing link" in a blog post on 30 September and noticed Jon's blog post of today; then wrote a new post today with a more specific headline.

The same questions could be asked about the even more anti-EU political group Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD).

How are these things possible in our day and age?

David G said...

I was asking myself the exact some question a couple of weeks ago - I've decided that this, in effect, is as close as we'll ever get :p
http://www.conservativeeurope.com/default.aspx

eurodatum.com said...

Hi Julien,

This is funny because we regularly check the ECR link but also the EFD link at the parliament website, in order to add it to our Directory of EU links www.eurodatum.com

As you can imagine we have to keep trying...!