Do you find navigating the European political ecosystem a bit overwhelming? Not only is it important to use your vote in the upcoming European Elections, but you should also do it responsibly. For this reason, it is crucial to know where the candidates in your country stand on issues you care about. You could of course start by reading tens of pages of their political agendas or party manifestos, or watch several pubic debates and interviews. But with less than a week left until you have to cast your vote, you won’t have enough time to go through all of it. So what should you do?
We partnered with the European University Institute (EUI) to share the perfect tool for understanding if parties in your country and across Europe align with your interests. On the 9th of May, EUI launched EU&I, a free online tool which matches voters’ preferences with party manifestos.
Similar to what we do within the Y Vote Project, EU&I aims to help Europeans make an informed choice when voting in the upcoming European Elections. Available in over 20 languages, the tool has been published online ever since the European Elections in 2009 and has even been replicated for other national elections in Italy, Estonia, France, Slovakia and Germany. 1.28 million users used the tool in 2019 and this year you can use it once again!
We have good news! You don’t have to go through long documents and read all the existing party manifestos in your country or abroad. On the contrary, the tool facilitates your learning experience by using a mathematical algorithm to find which parties stand closest to your interests. How? All you have to do is react to 30 statements related to contemporary policy issues and political values in European politics. The statements are linked to topics such as migration, security, government spending and so much more. Afterwards, the tool will show you which parties are closest to your preferences, helping you to match the issues you care about with their political agendas.
If you have been following us for some time, then you know that we will never encourage you to vote for a specific party but to cast your vote and participate in the decision-making process. Similarly, EU&I has been created by a non-political and unbiased entity and is the result of the contribution of over 130 researchers. You can learn more about the methodology behind it here.
This is why we encourage you to check it, get the results and then decide when ticking the box on the voting ballot. And if you want to learn more, you could always check the parties aligning the most with your interests and their detailed party programmes. Get informed and don’t forget to #UseYourVote!
Florina is originally from Romania and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Law, a Master’s Degree in European Studies, and an Erasmus Mundus MA in Human Rights Policy and Practice. She voted for the first time in the European Elections in 2014. In 2019, while she was an Erasmus+ exchange student in Prague, she waited 7 hours in line to vote at the Embassy of Romania. She was impressed back then by the commitment of hundreds of people to wait for hours to vote for the European Elections. She joined AEGEE in October 2018 and one week later, she participated as a helper in her first-ever event, the Y Vote Convention in Cluj-Napoca. She believes Y Vote is the reason why she remained in the organization and years later, she is now committed to giving something back to the project that made her fall in love with AEGEE.