Net making EU public sphere possible

Jon Bright (London, OK): I picked this up thanks to Jon Worth's excellent Euroblog. Romanian Institute IPP have set up a new website which allows you to track the performance of your MEP - and the 750 odd others that are out there. I realise, of course, this will be somewhat of a minority pursuit, and there are more than a few people who would rather do away with the whole lot of them than pick through how they are voting. But, for a Europhile (albeit sometimes sceptical) such as myself it's another small sign that, if such a thing as a European "public sphere" is to develop or could possibly develop (a big if), it is the existence of the internet that makes this possible - its ability to do things the printed press could never have dreamed of. A political union of the type the EU is developing (which is still directionally unclear, and still very much contested) would simply be unimaginable without technological advance - and  tools like this one seem to me to be a small contribution to this project.