EU at 50 – no parties, a bizarre logo, but decent Open Source software

With the EU still stuck in a deep period of reflection (hibernation?) I suppose it was no surprise that the celebrations to mark 50 years since the Treaty of Rome have been scaled back a lot. Plans for contests and parties have been ditched, as have ideas for symbolic tree planting across Europe. Instead we’ll have the appointment of two citizens’ ambassadors per member state who will explain to people how the EU works, and some youth events that will link children across the EU through web-based communication – see this from EUObserver. What a yawn. That’s all really going to make a difference.

The EU will however have a logo to celebrate the anniversary – the multi-coloured effort displayed here. The news story on that is here. The logo is high on symbolism, but it is not exactly pleasing on the eye – too many colours, and too confusing. I’m always concerned that the EU manages to create a logo for everything, yet does not always reflect on what it actually wants to communicate.

However, in amongst this morass of logos and bland ideas, there is one positive step forward. The website of the competition to design the 50 years logo is run using the excellent Open Source content management system Typo3 (see also my page on Typo3). Now, if only the entire Commission would wake up to that system the EU’s web presence could be massively improved.