Cypriot MEP Fidias Panayiotou, a 24-year-old online influencer with 2.7 million subscribers on YouTube, announced his intention to launch a ‘direct democracy’ app where Europeans can not only monitor what actually happens in the European Parliament, but also ‘vote’ on key EU legislation alongside MEPs and see how the popular opinions compare with the outcomes in Parliament.
Once it’s ready and enough people use it, the app could be a game-changer in improving the democratic accountability of Brussels lawmakers. Although the votes conducted in the app would not have any direct influence, Europeans would at least be able to see whether their elected representatives actually work in their interests or whether principles get sidelined by political deals while national parties hide behind coalition majorities.
From ‘prankster’ to defender of democracy
Fidias, as the influencer styles himself online, was born in 2000 and is the first independent ‘e-celeb’ to win a seat in the EU Parliament. His videos rarely touched political topics before his 2024 bid and he became famous instead for ‘blackmailing’ Elon Musk into giving him a hug and traveling across Asia without paying for tickets.
One can trace his ‘political career,’ if you can call it that, to early 2023 when he wanted to interview all 14 of Cyprus’ presidential candidates only to be refused by the two frontrunners. His independent EP candidacy a year later wasn’t based on any political platform but was largely meant as a protest against the growing detachment of the political class and a desire to increase democratic participation among members of his apolitical generation.
“I am 23 years old and I have never voted in my life, and I said to myself one night that if I never vote and I never take an interest, the same nerds are always going to be in power, and I said ‘enough!’” the YouTuber explained when announcing his bid.
With a whopping 19.4% of the votes, Fidias finished third in the EU election in June and took one of Cyprus’ six seats in the EU Parliament.
Since then, the MEP influencer has introduced quite a novel way to navigate Brussels’ legislative labyrinth and make the EU legislative process a bit more democratic. Before each key decision in the Strasbourg plenary, he would conduct polls among his followers on Instagram and X, then vote according to the majority opinion.
These ‘direct democracy’ polls have a greater reach than you’d expect. For instance, over 120,000 people participated in deciding whether or not Fidias should vote for or against Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s re-election in July, with 85% rejecting ‘Queen Ursula’s’ second term.
The future of EU democracy?
The success of this initiative gave birth to the idea of the new app, which Fidias announced on Monday, December 9th.
“I believe in direct democracy, that’s why I’m building an app so people can have directly a saying here in the European Parliament,” he said in a video posted on X. “I think making these polls was a great experiment to take into consideration what the people really want.”
At the same time, he acknowledges that his previous polls weren’t exactly representative of how Europeans think since anyone on the internet could participate.
“It is true that these polls are in danger of being participated by people outside Europe or by bots,” Fidias said. “But now with this app, there will be no such problems. It will be much more secure and only Europeans will be able to vote.”
I envision this app to be a step towards the future, where citizens not only vote every five years but can actually participate in everyday decision-making and in the development of legislation.
Fidias plans to make available the first version of the application only in Cyprus, and then release it in every EU member state after the local test run. He also asked his followers to contribute to the development by suggesting features they’d like to see in the app.
In less than 24 hours, his video amassed over 17 million views with over a thousand comments encouraging the development of the app and offering opinions of what it should include.
Among others, users suggested that the app should provide basic and concise information on EU legislative files which are often intentionally obscure and complicated. Others said it should differentiate between fundamental decisions affecting everyone’s lives in the EU and relatively important ones that could be suggested to users based on their personal areas of interest.
Another suggested that there should also be easy ways to compare your vote history with parliamentary groups and national parties, making it easy to hold politicians accountable and to make informed decisions before you vote for them in the next elections.
Security of the app, of course, will be one of the main concerns, but several tech companies dealing in blockchain development have already indicated that they’d be interested in working on the app, so it should not be an issue in the long term.
Although still in its infancy, the project has great potential to make the EU more democratic and less detached from the everyday reality of the people it claims to represent.
It might not be too enthusiastically welcomed by the establishment parties, especially given that Fidias’ ‘direct democracy’ often yields results that are opposite of what Brussels wants you to think—for example about peace in Ukraine—but that’s the whole point: making politicians work for the people again.
