Social Media Guidelines for EU institutions?

Last week in the European Parliament, Spanish MEP Francisco Sosa Wagner raised a parliamentary question with the Commission about the EU institutions' use of social media and the need to incorporate social media into the EU communication mix. 

Apparently, the question was triggered by the 'leak' of an important piece of information by the President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, through his personal Twitter account hours before the news were due to go public. 

Mr. Van Rompuy announced an "Agreement in principle on the Pact for the Euro," the so-called competitiveness pact. 

MEP Wagner demands a proper social media code of conduct for the European institutions, as the importance of social networks, especially Twitter, rises in today's society and obviously reached the highest ranks of EU politics. 

Wagner is pushing for a 'data protection resolution' for quite some time now, a resolution he claims is needed to ensure the role of social media as a tool of civil liberty and democratic values such as free expression, access to information and respect for privacy. Fair enough. How such a regulation could look like, no one knows yet. But the European institutions eventually have to acknowledge social media channels as integral part of their (political) communication mix.

The Commission has to respond within six weeks. I'll keep you posted.