At the remarkable Europe House in Copenhagen today doing a presentation to the Association of Danish Communications Professionals on Parliament’s use of social media. An interesting discussion and lots of great questions. But right now, as it’s late and a very early start tomorrow, just a bit of an aside about the session.

At the Polling Staion #1

As part of it, I was asked to select a sample of EU online videos to show the seminar. They were supposed to be illustrative of the best the EU had to offer in terms of online video. Come up with two or three from the Commission and two or three from Parliament, they said.

So here are the five I showed:

1. The all-time no.1 Youtube hit from the Commission, its famous “porno” video promoting the MEDIA programme. Classic example of general amazement at a body such as the Commission producing something like this… Watch out, you may have to assert your 18+ age to watch this…

2. The wonderfully retro-geeky “Chemical Party“, which proves slick isn’t everything. This is great. So un-institutional.

3. The contrasting high-production-values, loved-in-the-West, questioned-in-the-East tear-jerker, snappily-entitled “20 years of democratic change“. Nearly fell totally victim to politically correct editing by committee, nevertheless still emotionally powerful, lump-in-the-throat stuff (how often do you hear that about a Commission video?) but maybe leaves you feeling a little manipulated and propagandised? (And was Europe really “reunited” in 2004?) Still, whatever, you can’t ignore it: the Spielberg movie of EUTube…

4. From Parliament, it just had to be the screaming girl election viral video (picture), Parliament’s best seller so far.

5. Couldn’t resist bringing in at no.5 WebCom’s very own 2007 “Friday I’m in Love Lipdub“. We can’t really call this a “Parliament” video, as this was our own, unofficial, after hours thing, but it taught us a lot when it caused a local YouTube sensation and, yes, I just have to smile every time I see it for the joie de vivre it somehow exudes. I hear some of our colleagues have shown this at careers fairs since to show that we’re not all grey bureaucrats in Brussels!

As a bonus, I showed this tiny clip which the Obama team put out just before election day, just to prove that you really don’t have to be fancy to make a cracking online video. (By the way, is this clip from Belgium?)

So there you have it, my “top five” Euro-vids. Yours?