The official way to chat with the European Union is with.... Facebook

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It's just so bad, but also too weird. Specially after the recent EU court ruling about the EU not protecting privacy for citizens using Facebook to communicate with the EU

God. Damn. Boomers.

"Hi, is this Europe?"
- Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
- bass boosted* YES, THIS IS EUROPE!
- No, this is Patrick!

On Contact the European Union page, it links to the EU's facebook page.
Just what are they doing...
Edit: if you have a minute, do fill out the contact form to suggest alternatives, complain, or raise concerns.
- That's horrible and a conflict of interest too (as they're making themselves dependent on a company they are regularly fining for billons of euros) but also totally normal, as almost every single public institution is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp,...
- Did my duty and submitted a comment 🫡

It's one of several contact alternatives.
The cropped screenshot and "the official way" is entirely misleading.
- It's not. It how you chat with them, as in live chat. Email or a contact form is not a live chat.
  I also literally have a comment with the link to the page.
  
  I think the problem comes from the misinterpretation of 'chat' as a conversation and not as an avenue of support. Live Chat or any capitalized Chat might better said the next title to avoid confusion.
  BUT, live chat is stupid and as an IT professional beholden to a Live Chat my users don't need, just call them. If you don't have time to call, email them. Response times are UP with chat, but resolution times are DOWN. More deflection in a chat agent than service

Thats's embarrassing.

Yes it's a shame and I wish it was done another way, but also what alternative do they have ?
I'm gonna be the devil's advocate here and say that if your goal is to have people reach out, you want to make it as painless as posible . The majority of the population has or had a facebook / messenger account making the process to start a chat a simple as a click in most cases. If people had to download a thrid party app or register on yet another plateform, they would probably not start a new chat.
With the recent events this makes it even more urgent to move away from meta products, but the EU being as big as it is, this will take some time…
- ….email?
  
  On the linked page there is a contact form with an input box for email address, so I guess if you contact them via the form they will reply in email.
  FB is the only option if you want to chat in a written form. The third option is a phone number you can call.
  
  Snail mail?
  
  The image email has is the one if an old school slugish administration, probably the one physical mails had when emails came around.
  When I send an email to anyone, be it a company or an individual, I expect a reply in the next few days. But in chat I'm expecting a reply in a couple of hours. So I'd be much more inclined to a conversation via chat given the option.
  Also I'm not certain my experience with younger people and email is representative, but from what I've seen younger generations are not the most at ease with email.
  I think what's lacking here is the choice. Messenger is more appealing to a vast amount of people, but to some it might be the opposite, and those people need an lternative.
- I've never used Facebook Messenger. I do realize that FB Messenger not being properly encrypted does have advantages in terms of managing the account with multiple agents however. That might be a lot harder to replicate with Signal.
  
  In a lot of countries whatsapp is the defacto IM, but I live in a country where facebook messenger and viber became the standard for some reason. I guess they measured how much citizen they can reach on each platform and selected messenger based on that data.
  This is not for MEPs to message each other, not the recommendation by the Comission, this site is for ordinary citizens to get information. I think the biggest problem is why only facebook messenger?I would expect other similar platforms there, like whatsapp, viber, telegram or imessage.
  
  @federalreverse @Admax
  As a matter of fact, Meta is implementing end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger - much to my displeasure because I couldn't get it working in any of my browsers and thus couldn't read my messages since Christmas. Never mind, Facebook doesn't let me sign into my Facebook account anymore anways and keeps sending me in circles to solve the problem.

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