OFFICIALS EXPERIMENTING with a new ‘Tweetwall’ system at the meeting of European heads of government earlier this week were forced to abandon their experiment after the system was flooded with critical messages of Silvio Berlusconi.

Press staff at the European Council (or ‘EuCo’) meeting had decide to trial the Twitter system in a move to show how the European Union itself – sometimes considered to be far divorced from the lives of its individual citizens – was keen to listen to its 500 million citizens.

As a result, they had erected flat-screen TVs around the European Council buildings in Brussels, showing live tweets published by any user who included the #EUCO hashtag in their message.

The plan fell apart almost immediately after it was publicised, however, after angry Italian Twitter users flooded the stream with messages lambasting their under-fire prime minister, who this week scraped through motions of confidence in the Italian parliament.

Messages alleged that Berlusconi was a serial philanderer who had bought his way to the top of Italian politics, who also had deep Mafia connections.

Said one tweet:

Berlusconi pays for sex, for votes, for mafia protection, for everything he can buy. What he cannot buy will be stolen. #EUCO

Read another:

Berlusconi is a mafioso but he make laws for be not judged

They were seen and noted by passing journalists who were attending the meetings, and thus picked up worldwide prominence before the trial was pulled.

A member of the EU press office told the EU Observer that the Tweetwall had been up for about two hours in the main atrium of the Brussels HQ, “but it wasn’t moderated and a lot of the tweets were, well… very, very frank.”