On the 17th of July this year an airplane departing from Amsterdam crashed, while it was flying over the Ukrainian province of Donetsk, which is currently beset by pro-Russian groups. The crash could be seen as a tragedy on itself, but it could also be seen as a part of a greater conflict.

As the occasionally violent protests in Ukraine show, lines have been drawn between a pro-European and a pro-Russian side. However, by using the words pro-Europe and pro-Russia, people give off the illusion that Russia is not a part of Europe, but rather Europe’s opposite. It also supposes that the pro-Russian faction in Ukraine wants their country to be the opposite of Europe or that the EU Association Agreement is a join-Europe-today signup sheet. When someone believes this to be true or believes Europe stands for benevolent democracies or Russia for a malevolent dictatorship, this person might suffer from a almost 2500-year-old bias that the East is evil.

In the 6th century B.C. Greek explorer Anaximander categorised the earth. He devised it to be surrounded by one large ocean and divided by three rivers, which flowed from the outer ocean to the eastern part of the Mediterranean, thus dividing the earth into three continents: Europe, Asia and Libya. (Side note: according to Anaximander’s map East-African countries like Kenya would be part of Asia)

After the Grecian victory in the 5th century B.C. Greco-Persian Wars, however, the Greeks, mainly the Athenians and their allies, conceived the divide between Asia, home of the Persians, and Europe, home of the Greeks, to be both a natural and cultural one. The East, according to the Athenians, was stained by despotism, decadence and debauchery, whereas the west was characterised by democracy, superiority and decency. This was partially, because they had recently become a democracy by overthrowing their dictator, Hippias, who fled to Ionia (nowadays the west coast of Turkey) and allied himself with the enemy Persian Empire. Victory over the Persians might at the time very well have been seen as victory of democracy against the old ways.

This biased worldview, however, especially for Europe turned out to be a fallacy, since Europe has had its fair share of autocrats in the past: Roman dictators such as Sulla and Caesar, Roman emperors such as Caligula, Claudius and Constantine, the self proclaimed French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and kings such as Charles I of England, Frederick II of Prussia and, Louis XIV ‘the Sun King’ of France might come to mind. In the 21st century it is even hard to argue that concepts like chattel slavery or modern imperialism are indicators of either superiority or decency in the West.

While Russia could be considered to be less democratic than all of the other EU states or candidate members, it does not have to be categorised as a dictatorship or so much as an evil dictatorship. When someone reads about the conflict in Ukraine, western media often tend to view the Association Agreement, between the EU and the Ukrainian government in Kiev to be a ‘haha-in-your-face’ victory over Russia. This discourse, however, actually seems to be nothing but a cocktail of Cold War sentiments, infused with the ancient ‘East-is-evil’ bias. As a matter of fact, considering its elected house of representatives one could argue that Russia is more democratic than other states in the west of Europe such as Vatican City or Liechtenstein. Simply because it lies in the East, it does not mean that Russia or the Russian people instinctively despise either democracy or Europe. As the Anaximander’s map shows, the divide between Europe and Asia seems to be somewhere between arbitrary and non-existent.

Placing the aforementioned bias aside, there is, however, a political and economical divide in the border regions of Russia, which causes the conflict in Ukraine. With the signing of the Association Agreement on the 27th of June 2014 Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have agreed to implement a number of reforms aimed at improving democracy, the rule of law, human rights, fundamental freedoms, and at creating a well-functioning market economy and sustainable development in return for the creation of a framework to aid the enforcement of these reforms.

This Agreement, however, could have already been signed half a year ago by Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yanukovych, were it not for the political and economic alliances that presently fuel the conflict in Ukraine. Yanukovych refused to do what Ukraine’s current president Petro Poroshenko did, because of Ukraine’s shift from a non-associated economy to a politically charged one. In 2001 Ukraine had founded GUAM, an organisation to support democracy and economic development with its other members: Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova. One of the core principles of this organisation was that it was to be neutral, meaning not to the EU or to Russia aligned. However, between 2010 and 2013 Yanukovych not only considered Ukraine to become a member of the EU, but also to become part of the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. In response to this, both the EU and Russia declared that Ukraine could not become a member of both economic zones. Subsequently Yanukovych was persuaded by Russia not to sign the Association Agreement with the EU and strengthen Ukraine’s ties with Russia instead. Immediately after this decision protests broke out in Kiev, prompting a regime change, a transfer of the Crimean peninsula to Russia and a civil insurgence in the East of the Ukraine supported by Russia in order to pursue its economic interests with Ukraine and on top of which a plane from Amsterdam crashed.

In short, by signing the Association Agreement the government in Kiev has agreed to aid in conforming Ukraine’s democratic norms as well as its trade and customs regulations to those of the EU and that much of the European market will open up to Ukrainian exports. With the signing of similar Agreements by Georgia and Moldova these countries will receive similar benefits. Furthermore, now three of the four members of GUAM have aligned themselves with the European Union through these Association Agreements, it might become interesting for Azerbaijan to ponder upon a pro-European course as well.

However, as the plane crash demonstrates, when two political bodies fight, in this case for the pursuit of economic interests, civilians die. The fighting continues every day in Ukraine and the Association Agreement is by no means an end to it. However, without bias at least it becomes visible that the insurgence is not a glorified conflict between Good and Evil, democracy against dictatorships or West versus East.

Written by Willem Laurentzen, AEGEE-Nijmegen

These past days, The AEGEEan has got to know better the local that was elected as Local of the Month of March – AEGEE-Leuven! They organised a brilliant exchange between European and Palestinian students in the framework of the EuroArab Project last February, which was the reason for their nomination. 

The antenna, located in the famous Belgian student city, was founded in 1991 and resurrected around the year 2006. In the words of Heleen Yu, current president of AEGEE-Leuven: “We have always been a small local due to the oversaturated market of student organisations in Leuven”. At this moment, the local has around 50 members, of which 12-15 are active.

The School of Social Entrepreneurship

The School of Social Entrepreneurship (SSE) was an exchange between ten members of AEGEE-Leuven and ten Palestinian students from the West Bank, that AEGEE-Leuven organised in cooperation with the Palestinian NGO Sharek Youth Forum in the framework of AEGEE’s EuroArab-project. As Valérie Boiten, the coordinator of the exchange, explains, the ten Palestinians came to Leuven for a week, where the participants attended lectures, training activities and workshops concerning the idea of a social business.

Some of these workshops were provided by AEGEE members Wessel Reijers (AEGEE-Enschede) and Mathieu Soete (AEGEE-Leuven), but other organisations like JUB International, RootAbility and SPIT [ed. a local social business] were invited too. The participants also spent one day in Brussels to visit the European External Action Service headquarters where they could learn more about the European Neighbourhood Policy and the external actions of the EU, especially the ones concerning the situation between Israel and the West Bank. They also attended a session on quality jobs at the European Youth Forum headoffice. However, AEGEE-Leuven also offered a very rich social programme: dancing to traditional music and tasting Palestinian typical food, an ice-skating evening and a ‘Belgian night’ are only some of the highlights.

But, how did the adventure of the School of Social Entrepreneurship begin? The idea came up for the first time in June last year, during a study visit for youth workers where Valérie met Mahmoud, representative of Sharek Youth Forum, and the idea of organizing an exchange together started to grow. A few months later, Valérie and Dima (the project manager of Sharek) started to develop the plans of organizing SSE more concretely, and the application for the Youth in Action programme was sent to the National Agency in Brussels, which approved the project.

They agree that the challenge was pretty big for such a small local: “It was challenging to combine the multiplicity of tasks, but I guess this is something everyone who has ever organized an AEGEE event will recognize”, Valérie says. “Just when you think you’ve taken care of everything, something new pops up! There are literally a thousand things to think about and the Youth in Action procedures can be very exhausting”. Yet, in the words of the organisers, the biggest challenge was to ensure that the Palestians could get to Belgium in the first place! “We all know the hardship they face, and how their abilities to travel freely, even within their own country, are extremely reduced. It was very difficult to get through the visa procedures, they almost didn’t make it on time. Only two days before the project would start, the visas were granted. A huge relief!”, Valérie concludes.

AEGEE-Leuven, a small but active local

Only a few weeks after the SSE concluded, AEGEE-Leuven was already planning their new event, a local Y Vote 2014 conference. They invited Professor Christoph Crombez, who is an expert on European economics and politics, and Saïd El Khadraoui, a Leuven born and raised MEP. Both gave a short talk on the importance of the past European Parliament elections and the value of the vote of the youth. As Tom Etienne, current Treasurer, explains: “This was particularly interesting, because one point of view was clearly from an academic side, whilst the other one obviously came from a politician”. The event managed to gather a group of international students who asked about all kinds of issues, such as transparency and democracy in the EU, the financial crisis, the environment, and of course the results of the upcoming elections, and it concluded with a very active debate among the guest speakers and the young people.

AEGEE-Leuven is ackowledged for having organised many successful European events in the past couple of years, ranging from Travel Summer Universities, to a Network Meeting, and a thematic event in cooperation with the Human Rights Working Group. According to Heleen, “good teamwork and knowing each others’ strengths is I think in our case our advantage when it comes to organising exchanges. Almost everything is organised by the board, with a limited amount of help of volunteers, which we are grateful for”. Valérie adds that one of their biggest achievements has been “our growing rate of members over the past two years. From a small group of people we’ve seen our membership base evolve quite quickly, though of course we’re still quite small – but charming! On the other hand it is also nice that people seem to find us whenever it’s about European affairs or European organisations. We’ve been contacted quite a few times this year for projects, research and press articles”.

In fact, Leuven is widely-known as one of the biggest and most vibrant student cities in Europe. More than 40,000 students come to live there each year, and around 7,000 are international students coming from over 140 countries. As Heleen says: “It seems rather easy to reach international students since we are in the ‘international students organizations’ category. We are invited by the university to join the info fair for new incoming international students every semester”. However, she adds that, when it comes to reaching the Belgian students “it is more difficult, since there are not a lot of students who are particularly interested in meeting international people, as most people already have their “usual” group of friends and stick to this. But we see a change now, we think that more and more Belgians are open to their international fellows”.

The local has no future plans yet: there will be a new board elected at the start of the academic year which will surely surprise with new events and activities. Meanwhile, we wish AEGEE-Leuven the best and congratulate them once more for such a big achievement!

Written by Anna Gumbau,  AEGEE-Barcelona