Starting 8 May, voters in the European elections will be able to use Smartwielen, the online platform coordinated by the University of Luxembourg and the Zentrum fir politesch Bildung. Its features were presented yesterday at a press conference.
Although political parties have boosted communication efforts to present their electoral programmes, the reality is that large number of players involved as well as the multilingualism and complexity of the electoral system can be a source of confusion for many voters. Smartwielen aims to provide users with an overall comparative view of their own political position and those of the candidates or parties, enabling them to make a more informed electoral choice.
The main tool of the pratform is a questionnaire covering various European themes and political issues. As with the 2023 national elections, citizens and civil society were invited to submit questions to the Smartwielen team. Over 400 questions were submitted during a twenty-day phase.
A total of 38 statements were then selected. Of these, 25 are common statements among 24 EU countries, as part of the Votematch project. Votematch is a pan-European collaborative project designed to enable all users to calculate political proximity in other European countries: just by taking the Smartwielen test, Luxembourg users will be able to find out which party they are closer to in Portugal, Belgium or Italy for example. The other 13 statements are specific to Luxembourg.
This questionnaire has already been completed by individual candidates and political parties in the European elections. To date, 12 out of 13 parties and 62 out of 72 candidates completed the questionnaire. Once users have completed the questionnaire, they will be able to see their ‘match’, presented as a list of candidates and parties with percentages, as well as through graphical representations reflecting the different political dimensions and axes (the smartmap and the smartspider). As part of the Votematch project, users will also be able to find out which party they are closest to in the other EU countries taking part in the project.
Smartwielen is coordinated by Dr Raphaël Kies, Coordinator of the Luxembourg Platform for Participatory Democracy at the University, and Dr Marc Schoentgen of the Zentrum fir politesch Bildung (ZpB).
In the context of elections, Smartwielen is designed as an information tool to help voters decide on their political orientation, without making electoral recommendations. It is also a tool for citizenship education. This year, the website is available in 5 languages: Luxembourgish, French, German, English and Portuguese.
Smartwielen was set up for the first time for the 2009 legislative elections and then for the following European and legislative elections. Collaboration between the University and the ZpB began during the 2018 legislative elections and has continued ever since. In 2023, Smartwielen was consulted by 30% of voters for the parliamentary elections.
Discover the questionnaire on www.smartwielen.lu