How it works
1Only the original sound
We take the sound of the room straight from the official streams of the Parliament and the Commission. Never the interpreters' channels.
2Speech recognition
Soniox writes down what is said, in whatever language it is spoken, word by word and usually within two seconds. We use Soniox's European API, so audio and transcripts are processed in the EU.
3Translated into 24 languages
Every finished sentence is translated, via English, into all 24 official EU languages by Mistral, a European AI company. The translations are made by machine; the original is always one click away.
4Who is speaking
In the plenary, names are added afterwards from the Parliament's official records. Committees publish no list of speakers, so there we take names from the chair's announcements and mark them as such. We never use voice recognition.
5Summaries, search and video
After each debate an AI summary appears, with quotes that are checked word for word against the transcript. Everything is searchable, you can follow topics with email alerts, and every sentence takes you to that moment in the official video.
Built on European services
This is a service about European democracy, so we keep it in Europe wherever we can.
- Scaleway
- French cloud provider. Our servers run in its Amsterdam data centre, and our email goes out through Scaleway in Paris.
- Mistral AI
- French AI company. Its models translate the transcripts and write the summaries.
- Soniox
- Speech recognition through its European API, so audio and transcripts stay in the EU.
- Parliament and Commission
- The video plays directly from their servers; nothing passes through ours.
Agendas, speakers and records come from European Parliament Open Data (CC BY 4.0), the Parliament's eMeeting system and the European Commission's Audiovisual Service.
Who it is for
- Journalists across Europe, especially at regional and smaller newsrooms without a correspondent in Brussels.
- Civil society, NGOs, researchers and students who follow EU policy.
- Officials and parliamentary staff, in the EU and in the member states.
- Citizens who want to hear what their representatives say, in their own language.
Reading, search and subtitles are free for everyone. Journalists, NGOs, public institutions and universities get alerts and extra tools free of charge; companies and lobby organisations pay for them.
Our ambitions
- Every public moment of the EU institutions, live and in every language: besides the plenary, committees and the midday briefing, also the press conferences around summits and the Council.
- National parliaments: we are researching how to add parliaments across Europe, so you can follow a debate in another country in your own language.
- An open archive that journalists and researchers can rely on, with tools to quote, clip and subtitle.
- Independent, and open about how it works and where it can go wrong.
Who makes it
Brussels Live is made by the team behind gehoord.de/beraadslagingen, which transcribes the Dutch House of Representatives and Senate live. It is an independent journalistic project.
What to keep in mind
- Transcripts and translations are made automatically and contain errors. They are not an official record; the institution's own record is what counts.
- Speech recognition sometimes gets names and numbers wrong. Check the original and the video before you quote.
- The AI summaries are a pilot. Every quote is checked against the transcript, but a model chooses what to include.