Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, Minister of Foreign Affairs Steven Vanackere and State Secretary for European Affairs Olivier Chastel launched the new official website for the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The website will be the nerve centre for communication during the Belgian EU presidency, and the official source for information.

The Official website of the Belgian Presidency of the Council has been formally launched on June 25th , to be central corner of communication during the period of Belgian Presidency. The site which is designed to be accessible, open and flexible, will contain  contributions from EU institutions such as the Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Targeted groups of Belgian Presidency site Eutrio.be

• The press: The press is the link between the European Union and the general public. They have direct access to a simple and practical tool for press.
• People professionally involved with the presidency: The hundreds of representatives that take part in the forums and meetings can make use of the current affairs section and the detailed calendar of the Presidency that is published on the website.
• The general public: The general public in Belgium, Europe and other countries are an important target group and they have a wide range of information available to them: photos, latest news about the EU and the calendar with cultural activities.

Specific functionalities, Accessibility and Open-source at Eutrio.be

Eutrio.be also includes the full calendar of activities related to the presidency, including cultural events as well as all the official meetings. Eutrio.be is a full-service multimedia centre, where press announcements, photos, videos and live broadcasts of press conferences and seminars are published. RSS feeds, text message alerts from the Council, high resolution for multimedia and the possibility of exporting calendars increase the ease of use.

Eutrio.be has the aim of involving the general public with the EU presidency. As well as background information about the presidency, eutrio.be also publishes information about Europe, and Belgium as the host country.

Eutrio.be can be consulted anywhere, anytime with the mobile version. People have constant access to the current affairs section and calendar via smartphones, PDA, and mobiles phones. Ministers’ and employees' activities can also be followed closely via the Belgian Presidency Twitter channel and all twitteres of the Presidency. Thanks to the share-this function, information can be shared and re-used on social networking sites, Twitter and via bookmarks.

Sustainability and re-usability are two important values of the Belgian EU presidency that also apply for eutrio.be. The website is therefore constructed using the open-source content-management system, Drupal. The source code is also made available to other federal government and European member states.

The website is summarised as a communication platform, which other websites can make use of for photos, audio and video files  during the EU presidency. It is the result of a collaboration between the FPS Chancellery of the Prime Minister, the FPS Foreign Affairs, the FPS Communication and Information Technology, the communities and the regions.