During EPM Zagreb, the Civic Education Working Group organised a debate competition, which prize was an Interrail Pass. Domen Brus from AEGEE-Osnabrück was the winner, and he wrote this report of his interesting journey for The AEGEEan.

I started my journey in Ljubljana where I boarded the train headed for Frankfurt, final destination of the day being Konstanz. On the platform, I ran into an old friend of mine who was taking the same train so I was in for a fun drive. However, at that point I had no idea about the “real Deutsche Bahn experience” that was about to follow.

First, we stopped somewhere just across the German border as there was some accident on the tracks. Waiting time: two and a half hours. Luckily such accidents really connect people, so I got to know many nice people and actually had a great time waiting. Fast forward to a couple of hours later, the train stops at Augsburg train station. The board next to the train reads: Delay of 170 min. As I thought things couldn’t get worse the sign changed to: The train is cancelled. So, I boarded a new train and continued my way towards Konstanz. I miraculously caught a connection on the wrong side of Lake Constance and I thought I would actually make it there. As soon as this thought went through my mind the lights flashed and went dark, the train stopped in the middle of a field with a creaking noise and the emergency lights came on. At that moment, it also started to rain. It was already midnight. I knew that if we wouldn’t start moving in exactly eight minutes, then I would miss my last connection and be stranded in a village in the middle of nowhere. Two hours later we were still there. Due to some regulation, they couldn’t let us off the train but sadly they had no actual updates regarding our trip. Finally, a new train arrived and took us to the next station, where a friend of mine awaited me and the first day of travelling thankfully finished.

I spent the next four days in Konstanz. We planned to enjoy the lake, do some kayaking etc. I somehow forgot it’s Germany that I’m talking about so naturally it was more or less raining for four days. Nevertheless, we had a great time. We explored the city and its surroundings and also made some cycling trips to Switzerland. On Monday morning I took the train to Berlin. Due to the experience of the first day I was really paranoid but the trip was actually very enjoyable. I stayed in Berlin until Friday. I was visiting a friend who also lent me her bicycle. I think I made about 150 km in those three days. I was really lucky with the weather so I was able to explore the streets and parks of Berlin thoroughly. I found awesome beach bars, rooftop parties, open air cinemas, dusty record shops, cheap awesome food, cool graffiti and intriguing small galleries. Those few days really reminded me why I fell in love with the city many years ago. I was actually really sad to leave on Friday morning but new adventures awaited me!

It was then that my first class Interrail ticket came in most handy. I took the train to Osnabrück that continued to Amsterdam. When I arrived on the platform there were about 600 young people waiting for the train and for a second I thought I’d have a problem. Well, there were almost no people in the first class and you also get Haribos! I made it to Osnabrück, the best city in the world, just in time to join the local antenna for the canoeing trip. It was really great to see the familiar faces of my old antenna. The canoeing was also just as I remembered it – very rainy but still awesome! Someone mentioned that Osnabrück was the rainiest city in Germany – definitely not something that I knew when choosing my Erasmus destination! After the canoeing, we enjoyed a nice barbecue in front of the city castle and then toured the city till late hours. Next day I first went to the non-existent city of Bielefeld to meet a friend and then finished the day in Verden, a small town close to Bremen where I stayed with a fellow AEGEE friend for a couple of days. Of course, there were again delays and cancellations so yet again I spent many, many hours waiting aimlessly. I used that time mostly for relaxation and to plan my next trip. My original plan was to spend that weekend in Hamburg which turned out to be a horrible idea due to all the craziness that surrounded the G20 meeting. After a few days, I decided to go to Sweden, to Uppsala. When I checked the connection, I saw that I had to change five times and that it would take 14 hours to get there if it all went according to the plan. Since I’m not a smart man I decided to take my chances.

All went surprisingly smooth up until the very end, I was even pleasantly surprised by our whole train taking a ferry. I was asleep at the time so I was quite confused when I woke up inside a ship. I was almost in Stockholm, when there was another “incident” on the tracks so yet again we had to wait for an unknown amount of time. I somehow made to Uppsala by 1:30am, when the night was almost ending since it’s so far up north. The train drive across Sweden was absolutely breath-taking. There are hundreds of little lakes, vast forests and beautiful solitary farms on the grassy fields. The next days I spent too much on bad coffee and overpriced beer. Jokes aside, it was a really nice experience to see a small Swedish student city and the friend whom I was visiting proved to be quite a good city guide.

Only after two days I had to leave again. I travelled to Hamburg to see what the riots did to my beloved Schanzenviertel. To my surprise and amazement there were almost no more traces of the chaos that went on just a few days before. I had a great dinner and too many beers with an Italian friend that I was visiting so I took the morning train almost directly. Not a good idea, I really do not recommend this. I was supposed to be home in 12 hours but by that time I should’ve known better. After many hours of confusion and chaos I made it to München where I took the bus to Ljubljana, since there were no more trains for the day. It was 2pm. After getting home I slept for about two days to recover a bit and set my head straight.

Despite being really unlucky with the trains I really had an amazing time. I saw many people that I hadn’t seen for a really long time, explored many new places, met great new people and generally gained a lot of valuable experience. The only thing I regret is not making my trip longer and seeing even more things.

Written by Domen Brus, AEGEE-Osnabrück

If you have attended EPM Zagreb 2017, you might have assisted to the final round of the debate competition organised by the Civic Education Working Group. The debate in Zagreb was just the last step of a journey started last year in November when Balint Toronyai from AEGEE-Budapest and Doro Harles from AEGEE-Mannheim, members of the CEWG sent an open call for topics. We spoke with them to understand how the competition went. 

Why did you decide to do the competition? 
Bálint: We participated in some amazing debates during the Summer University of AEGEE-Warszawa last summer. We experienced how competitive debating can improve complex and critical thinking in a really fun way. After both of us joined the Civic Education Working Group we decided to organise this competition to strengthen civic competencies and promote debating in the AEGEE community.

How did you select participants? 
Bálint: The application for the competition was open for every AEGEE member; however there were two conditions: the applicants had to be available in Zagreb during the EPM where the final debate took place and they had to apply in pairs (or pair-up with the other single participants) as the debate format and the winning prize were created for such teams. The applicants had to write about their motivation, debating experience and answer some other simple questions, but the true selection was coming in the pre-round of the competition.

Who were the teams? 
Bálint: Most of the teams were formed by people who already knew each other, with one exception where we matched two single participants. It was a really diverse field, seven different AEGEE antennas were proudly represented: Skopje, Heidelberg, Osnabrück, Nijmegen, Bilbao, Zaragoza and Ljubljana. It is easy to say that it was a truly European debate competition.

What was the structure of the debate? 
Bálint: There were two rounds of the debate competition. The pre-round was an online round, where the teams had to prepare video statements with their arguments and send them to us and to their debate opposition. This online way of debating was far from optimal, but it was a compromise we had to take for a Europe-wide debate. The best four teams of the pre-round qualified to the live final which took place at EPM Zagreb. The format of the final was the classical British Parliamentary debate, where two teams have to compete with each other both on the government and the opposition side. This complex way of debating makes it possible to approach issues from multiple angles. 

What were the topics debated? 
Doro: In the pre-round, there were three topics, in debates called proposals, debated on: “This house believes that (THBT) migration should be promoted in the EU”, “THBT an unconditional basic income should be established in the EU” and “THBT people older than 70 should not vote”. The topics were chosen from a bunch of ideas send from the Network in an open call for topics. The proposal at the final was “THBT referendums should be forbidden in national democracies” and fitted to the topic of the EPM “Populism and Anti-European Agitation”.

What was the reaction? Are you satisfied with the result?
Doro: The audience at the final was interested in the topic and the format used to bring the topic closer to people. They could also participate in it by voting before and after the debate which side they were on: for or against the proposal. After the debate, more people were for the proposal than before. In general, the audience liked the event. The participants could develop and practice their skills in public speaking during the competition and all managed the speech in front of a big audience well. We are very satisfied with the development that our participants made over time and that people were interested and not super bored by debating. About the result in the sense of the winners, we cannot say that we would have liked one time better than the other. We are delighted with the winners who are happy about winning the two interrail tickets.

Would you replicate it in other events? 
Doro: We were already thinking about it because a competition is a good way to show that debating can be interesting. Yet, we need to have a fitting event, time to prepare it and find a good prize for the next time. Maybe we are going to do it a bit smaller than this time. Nothing is settled yet but we are working on it.

Is there something you want to add?
Doro: Maybe people got inspired by the debate from EPM and want to organise one in their locals or somewhere else. We have updated the debating toolkit and people can find all relevant information there. Check it out!

Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona

Our statutory event is a beautiful place where we meet, discuss and share our vision of the Association. It is also a common thought that we are not living it to the fullest and the format is a bit outdated. For the past five months a task force worked on some improvements and the results can be seen in certain proposals and in the possibility to upload pictures of candidates on the system. But that is not all…

The Chair Team, who was also part of the Agora Reform task force, introduced some changes in the Agenda, switching some items from the plenaries to the prytannia, in order to have more time and fewer attendees to discuss relevant topics, such as activity reports, policy papers and financial matters.

Another new procedure is a pilot Debate for Presidents. Debates were never used in the recent years of our association, but they were organised in the past with former CD members debating with candidates. The Agora debate can be a good way to understand candidates’ vision better and to see them interact with each other opposing or defending their opinions. The Agora Bergamo debate will be held on the second day of the Agora, during the evening plenary when Réka Salamon and Pablo Hernandez Rodriguez will have 30 minutes to debate on given topics. The AEGEEan will collaborate with the Chair Team in drafting the topics, but a poll will be open in order to have members of the Agora suggest topics, ask questions and give their opinion. Therefore, stay tuned and follow The AEGEEan Facebook Page, The Chair Team Facebook Page and the Participants group.

Another big change is the new procedure of presentation for candidates of the Juridical Commission. Now the procedure for presentation is divided in three parts: the application form, a presentation in front of the Agora and questions. Taking inspiration from some parliamentary procedures, the Chair Team and the Agora Reform task force decided to try a reverse order doing a pilot on only one commission with the aim to make elections more informative as possible as well efficient time wise. For Monika Mojak, Elisa Tabby and Matteo Lai, then, the procedure will change as follows: application form online, questions and presentations, restatement of unanswered questions.

During the questions round, on Thursday the 19th of May, during the morning plenary, multiple questions can be asked to multiple candidate, thus they can change their presentations incorporating new information and adjust it based on what the network is most interested in and present it in the morning plenary on Friday the 20th of May. After their presentation, it will be still possible to ask question to candidates, but only unanswered questions will be allowed.

For more information, please download the Agora booklet here. 

Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona

In order to strengthen civic competences in AEGEE, the Civic Education Working Group has been promoting debating throughout the year. Why? Debating was proven to improve academic achievements, critical thinking, mutual understanding, as well as communication, argumentation and interpersonal skills. In short it helps you to know more and form a better-founded opinion. Today we are taking the debate online for the first time, with a topic that challenges the very basis of our organisation!

One of the powers of debate is to challenge the assumptions that are made by individuals or groups. Every human being makes certain assumptions and draws conclusions based on the incomplete information they have. Debating pushes people to think critically and get informed in more aspects. As an organisation, it is useful to have a solid ground on which we rely when giving direction to our work, but from time to time we also have to take a critical look at things.

In the case of AEGEE, we base our work on certain principles as laid out in our Statement of Principles. One of those principles concerns Human Rights. We agree that it is fundamental to promote freedom and human rights as “essential elements of a European society”. We aim to serve as an example and spread these values among the youth of Europe through our work and behaviour. This is presently reflected in the mentioning of Human Rights in AEGEE’s strategic aims as an important civic competence to be taught to AEGEE members, as well as to youth in formal education.

But what does the promotion of Human Rights mean? In what way is it an essential element of an European society? To explore the relevance of Human Rights, we challenged Andrea, known to have been involved in many Human Rights promoting initiatives, to argue that:

Human rights are outdated and incompatible with the 21st century world social development issues.

The opposition is done by Joanna, who will try to explain why human rights are still relevant. Note that these statements are not necessarily the person’s personal opinion, nor are the arguments they use indisputable. We challenge you to get involved in the discussion (on the forum), react on the arguments and decide for yourself what you think about human rights; and what place it should have in our organisation.

Here you can read Andrea defending the motion and here Joanna opposing the motion. 

Written by the Civic Education Working Group

It has been over a year since AEGEEDebate was introduced to the AEGEEan. Recently, a very relevant debate was published, in cooperation with Yvote, on the differences between national rules on participation in the European elections. This made us wonder how the project has developed over the last year and what the future holds, according to one of the initiators of the project: Ivan Bielik (AEGEE-Brno). 

European Presidential Debate 2014

What AEGEEDebate is

Ivan says that “the initiative started at the beginning of 2013. So far, there have been 12 online debates on various topics related to society, the EU, politics or AEGEE. There were experiments with the video debates recently, but because of some technical problems the text-based debates prevail. This year the website also got a Visual Identity template. So the AEGEEDebate initiative has got its own pace right now. People are slowly starting to recognize it and the format. One aspect that is still underdeveloped however, is the cooperation with other thematic bodies of AEGEE-Europe. This platform for debate has the ability to partly overcome the much discussed “lack of cooperation” on European level of AEGEE-Europe.”

The reason behind the creation of the platform

Ivan believes that there are a few definite answers in the world and thus we need to talk and argue about the phenomena that are not definite. “Our social reality is full of such indefinite answers. At Agora, when the prytania is dealing with for example removing nationalities from CIA or establishing regional structure of AEGEE (just to mention first two that crossed my mind), the arguments for or against do not possess a value true/false, but strong/weak. Therefore they offer the space for debate and controversy. The same applies when we talk about problems in society (elections, populism, immigration or war). So the reason for the existence of AEGEEDebate is to provide an online-space for controversial debates. In this way, the debate in AEGEE won’t be restricted and only open to Agora attendees, but provided to a broader audience.”

Benefits of AEGEEDebate

Ivan is convinced that the debate brings three basic benefits for AEGEE. “First, the debate is informative. You get information and knowledge when you listen or read the debate. Thus, you can learn new points of view and perspectives to the problem. Second, the debate develops your skills. I will divide them into two categories – quality of argumentation and ethics of argumentation. The quality of argumentation means that those who debate regularly are able to express their opinion in a brief and structured way that is to the point. Moreover, their arguments satisfy the logical requirements and are reasonable without fallacies (logical mistakes). The ethics of argumentation covers such values as tolerance and respect to different opinions. These values lead debaters into critical thinking about the ideas they heard or had in mind. Last, but not least, is the promotion of citizenship. This abstract concept covers the area of participation and education. Debating makes you engage in fields you care about. Whether it is in your local city, AEGEE or university, debate skills enable you to participate in decision-making and help to raise your self-confidence. Citizenship is also about recognizing between the facts and the feelings, between populism and reasonable arguments. All this is achieved by debating. All in all, as you can see, debating brings more good than harm.”

Involvement of participants

Last month Ivan realized that only organizing debates online does not contribute much to the above mentioned benefits. “That was a decisive moment to launch a new function of AEGEEDebate. From now on, you can find on the website the sub-page Resources that will be regularly updated with material to increase your knowledge about the debate. You can find out how to recognize arguments, what is a debate case or find some other debate portals to learn even more. By this, I believe I can fill the empty space on the website to provide information and basic materials for the development of your skills.

I would say an obvious statement that you can infer even from the text alone. Debate is important for any individual or organization. We need to face controversial issues and debate about them. AEGEEDebate tries to achieve this goal by online means.”

If you have any suggestion for the initiative or you are willing to help with it (PR, design, website or anything else) you can contact the AEGEEDebate team by email at aegeedebate@gmail.com, on Facebook or on Twitter.

Written by Ivan Bielik, AEGEE-Brno and Wieke van der Kroef, AEGEE-Leuven/Amsterdam

The Ukrainian crisis has dominated the news in the past months. In order to show a European perspective on the situation, AEGEE-Nijmegen organised a debate night, with a broad panel of academics, policy makers and of course AEGEEans from Ukraine. The debate, titled ‘Ukraine Rising: perspectives of a European (r)Evolution’, took place on May 14^th and was the kick-off for a series of thematic events on Ukraine. The AEGEEan spoke to the organising team about their activity.

Last December a small delegation of AEGEE-Nijmegen members visited the city of Lviv to witness and experience what’s happening there first hand. There, they came in contact with some of the organisers of the demonstrations, and spoke with them about their view on the protests and Ukraine’s future. As the conflict escalated, they remain concerned for Ukraine, and decided to act. Soon enough ten motivated members were found and Project Ukraine became a fact, consisting of Manon Luinenburg (President), Monika Paskauskaite (Secretary), Luke Peerdeman (Treasurer and Board Responsible), Jesper van Munster (PR & Fundraising), Jenya Bednaya (Incoming Responsible), Anouk Evers (Outgoing Responsible), Alexander van Ratingen, Wouter de Vries, Dorian Schaap and Ron Stoop.

During the event a broad panel discussed their views on the history, present and future of Ukraine.   First off, doctor Marc Jansen (University of Amsterdam) put the Euromaidan rallies, the deposition of Yanukovych and the annexation of the Crimea in a historical perspective. After his address, two Ukranian AEGEEans shared their personal stories; Nelia Golubiatnikova from Lviv and Diana Melikian from Charkiv. Even though both girls had a long trip behind them, they still managed to show the well-known AEGEE-spirit during their presentations. Nelia shared her personal story about the demonstrations in Lviv, while Diana focused on the situation in the eastern part of Ukraine and the anti Maidan protests.

After the speeches, a panel debate was held, to which the earlier speakers contributed with additional experts. These were John Stienen, OSCE observer, civil servant and AEGEE alumnus, and Mikhail Smirnov, a Russian student, who now studies conflict sciences in Nijmegen. Together with the audience, they discussed about the future of Ukraine. The goal of the debate was to have people from different backgrounds share the different perspectives on the current situations. The personal stories of the Ukranian speakers and the passion of the Russian panel member resulted in a strong discussion, while the audience felt free to share their opinion too.

The evening attracted over 80 participants, from a variety of backgrounds.  The next big event on the calendar will be an international conference on Ukraine, later this year. The conference will consist of lectures from different international speakers and interactive workshops, so the different visions can be shared. Project Ukraine wants to combine the event with an exchange, so participants can discover Nijmegen and the Netherlands too, while sharing their views and concerns in an international arena.

Of course, a question that arises is: should there be more large events like this organised about the situation in Ukraine? The organising committee says they were lucky to have enough enthusiastic members, and that organising an event like this takes up a lot of time and energy. They feel like a dire situation like the one in Ukraine deserves to be taken seriously. That’s why they wanted to provide a platform where people from different background can feel free to share their thoughts.

As organisers, they wanted to remain neutral which can be a delicate balance on such controversial topics. Their main goal was to add to a comprehensive civil discussion on the Ukrainian situation. It was felt that this kind of event was something their antenna could do, and that the organisers had the passion and capacity to do the topic justice. They feel it’s very important to find the passion in your antenna, and to translate that passion into events that fit the identity of your local. “In the end, we just hope that we could help, even in a small way, to illuminate and educate about Ukraine’s situation”, Jesper says.

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen, pictures taken by Kelley van Evert, AEGEE-Nijmegen

“Do the textbooks we learn from in school reveal and shape national attitudes?” This was the title for the first online thematic discussion of the renewed Culture Working Group (CWG) that was held in early December 2012. Even though it was a rather cold evening, there we were ten enthusiast members to discuss the power of textbooks and to influence one another from a cultural and national point of view.

So, why focusing on such a topic? After all, textbooks are the first books that children have in their hands and that somehow shape their first perceptions of the world. Their contents are mostly decided upon by governments, who might use their influence to introduce a rather nationalistic component. As the discussion went further, we realized that this was more complicated than it seemed.

West vs. East: Do we as Europeans learn the same?

One of the things that shocked most of us immediately was that, whereas most of the Central and Eastern European countries have a wider overview on Europe’s history, Western European students tend to focus more on their area and simply forget about the East. “We only learn about the USSR, the fall of the Soviet Union, and not much more”, most of them recalled.

All the members agreed that, as Europeisation is going further, it is essential to learn more about our neighbours and try avoiding such Western-centrism. Kristóf Papp, from AEGEE-Budapest, mentioned this point as a key to strengthening a European identity. Guillermo García Tabarés, from AEGEE-Barcelona and CWG speaker, suggested that maybe “we shouldn’t go so deep into local level history, because it can promote nationalism without any based root, and go a bit more international to be able to understand our neighbours and accept them not as the traditional enemies”.

However, it’s true that it would be hard for most European countries to have the same attitude towards wars or some other recent events in our history, as Ola Zalecka, from AEGEE-Toruń, mentioned. Sebastian Hitz, from AEGEE-Heidelberg, added that “history teaching is not only about facts, but about analysis and interpretation” and that “nationalisms are shaped when history is taught in such a judging way”.

So, should we learn regional, state or international level?

In this sense, there is a strong division among countries. On the one hand, the Spanish and Italian participants that were at the discussion agreed that regional history, language and literature have a strong presence in textbooks’ contents. This can lead sometimes to a political confrontation between the centrist and nationalist parties ruling their country.

On the other hand, we learnt that other countries, such as Poland or Hungary, don’t pay extra attention to regions as much as national and international history. But we could observe some differences even in the same country, like in Italy. Alessio Caddeo from AEGEE-Venezia and Claudia Maria Scampinato from AEGEE-Catania exposed their views: whereas in Sardinia the content is more focused on Italian history, students in Sicily tend to learn more on their regional history.

With this in mind, the discussion led to two other questions. The first one was: Should Europeans learn about history focused more in a regional, national or international level, or even creating an European textbook? Even though we aim to create a European identity, we agreed that we shouldn’t keep our nations or regions aside, as Europe is based on its diversity.

We also discussed about the periods of history we should learn about. Should we focus on recent history rather than ancient one, in order to understand better our current situation? This led to a strong debate. Whereas some thought that we should indeed give more importance to contemporary history, others argued that we can learn a lot from the past, and that we often “have to go one step back in history to understand people’s behaviour”.

What can AEGEE do? 

However, we agreed that there’s still a long way to go to increase our awareness. Fortunately, we could count on some proposals for projects that could be developed within the CWG by our active members, and this was indeed very encouraging. After two hours and a half discussing we reached to the conclusion that AEGEE, as an organization concerned about European cultural awareness, plays an important and successful role.

We are on the right track since we have noticed that many of the Westerners have known and understood better the Eastern European history through other AEGEE members and the other way round.

Do you want to know more about textbooks? The following links will provide you with more information on the topic:

The Economist

CDSEE.org 

A textbook for Europe? 

Written by Anna Gumbau, AEGEE-Barcelona and member of the Culture Working Group