Thursday 24 June 2010

EU Council with new website design

It is incredible, but the Council of the European Union has a newly designed website. I got so much used to the old 1998-style of the portal that I cannot believe that they actually did this.

The style is equal to that of the European Council - probably the test ground (or the place where they realised that a new design was actually possible). A first quick look into the content makes me feel that the basic structure and content isn't changed, except probably for the digital press room.

It looks nice, that is for sure.

However, the most important change regarding that would be necessary is that the different Council configurations are filled with life. I want to click on the Agriculture Council and find all meeting documents, news, photos etc. (including the work of the Working Parties) available instead of heaving to search for them with a lot of efforts in the Council document register.

Speaking about the register that is linked under "Documents" in the main menu, I'd recommend that you don't need to click through four links until you actually can search for documents. Why not having a search right after clicking on "Documents"?

But let's not complain, it's already nice to see that the Council has moved into the 21st century, at least in website design. Waiting now for more transparency in its general work...

1 comments:

Ralf Grahn said...

Julien,

I pretty much agree with your views, both on the esthetics and on the substance, especially what you say about making the Council configurations function thematically.