After many years, a French Antenna organised an international event representing also an occasion to brush up on the French language skills. The journalist Matteo Lai decided to spend a special Easter and took part in this very smart event whose main organiser was Ines Alvergne. There were few organisers, all of them very generous and open minded.

Between the 25^th and the 29^th of March 2016, during the Easter weekend, a group of four amazing girls, Ines Alvergne, Romane Bossard, Noemi and Juliette Bouletton, organised one of the fewest AEGEE events in France and, in particular, in Lille, Flanders, near the French border with Belgium. The main organiser was Ines, a nice twenty-year-old student who enjoyed an Erasmus project in Cordoba, Spain, and currently studies Political Science at ESPOL at the Catholic University in Lille. In order to arrive to Lille, I took a Ryanair flight from Cagliari to Brussels Charleroi and I got to Lille bus station (Gare de Lille Europe) by a Flibco bus in the evening. The transfer lasted two hours but I felt very excited when I recognised the accommodation (a dojo) I had seen on Facebook.

Ines gave me a warm welcome to the house and I immediately broke ice by introducing myself to the participants. Some of them arrived later than me, but it was an unforgettable group of crazy people: Yoly Villalba, Peter Burger, Michael Neumann, Joep Heirman, Clara Ferrer Lopez, Michele Savino, Diana Poniros, Katerina Klimovà, Vicky Tzouvara, Ioanna Drympeta, Lorenzo Benozzi, John Cobbledick, Fabian Kebler, Eugenia Casariego Artola and Dimitri Anagnostaras .

The event began officially at 7 pm with French wine and cheese tasting. All cheeses and wines were very delicious so that I asked myself why there were not more because I was very hungry. The cheeses were Chévre, Comté and Camembert; whereas the white wine was “Sauvignon” from Alsace and the red ones were “Bordeaux” and “Cotes du Rhone”. After the light dinner, the organisers decided to accompany us to the most beautiful places and the coolest streets of the nightlife. They also invited the participants to taste some beers like the Belgian Rince Cochon. It was just the beginning because, the following day, Juliette proposed us to visit a brewery in Lille where we learned something about the production process of beers in Flanders. That brewery was the “Brasserie Cambier” (in rue Jean Monnet). The owner of the factory made me curious so I bought two kinds of the beers which were made there: Mongy Blonde and Mongy Triple. About this brewery, you can also explore their website http://www.brasserie-cambier.fr/.
During Saturday evening, it was the turn of the European Night: many AEGEE members know what I am talking about but I can not avoid to express my happiness in seeing a French organiser, Noemi, drinking a glass of “Giogantinu”, a typical Sardinian white wine, although at the beginning she was not persuaded because the bottle did not look good. Later we were involved in a night tour among some pubs and then in a disco. On Sunday, the participants had a lot of fun with a <<crazy 50>> city tour, something like a treasure hunt which allowed us also to listen to a chorus inside a restaurant during lunch time singing the French national anthem, la Marseillaise. At dinner, I could not miss some French dishes so I tried some meat and potatoes and that was all very good.

On Monday I visited the Zoo in Lille (in Avenue Mathias Delobel) where we laughed a lot taking some pictures near to the animals. In the afternoon, we went to the Beaux-Arts Museum in Place de la Republique, one of the largest art museums in France. Inside this museum, for example, you could look at some works by Donatello, Raphael, Van Dyck, Tissot, Rembrandt and Goya. In the evening, we tasted the French crepe: I admit it was much better than the ones I usually eat in Sardinia once a month.

Afterwards, Ines announced it was the moment to vote “The Best of”, as it
happens in many AEGEE events. If I may say so myself, I was voted as the best participant, the craziest and the best male ass [I laugh]. Why was I awarded no less than three prizes? I can not tell you that and it will remain a secret between the participants and the organisers of this Easter French adventure. If some other AEGEE members will visit France, I suggest them to study a little French language: it could get useful because French people are very attached to their native idiom. Anyway, I learned some French words (also rude words) and sentences thanks to Juliette and Noemi’s workshop. Au revoir, mademoiselles [I laugh] (which in English means “Goodbye, young ladies”).

After this international event, I am convinced that not all French girls are snobbish. I participated in a very cool event organised by an AEGEE antenna which was born a little more than two years ago (on the 4th of July 2013) thanks to enterprising girls like Ines and Romane (the current President of AEGEE-Lille) who believe in cultural exchange and contribute to make French a language much more spoken in AEGEE.

Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari.

Just like we did for the last two Agorae (namely Spring Agora Patra and Autumn Agora Cagliari) this year again we want to provide you with a short and easy summary of the proposals submitted for Spring Agorasturias. In this first round, we will be explaining you three proposals that are aimed at improving the CIA, namely ‘Improving the CIA one step at the time (6): Fixing small mistakes’, ‘Improving the CIA one step at the time (7): Charter of Honorary Members’ and ‘Abolir le français en tant que seconde langue officielle de l’Assemblée générale et des statuts des sections locales’. 

Now you may wonder: “What is this CIA you are talking about? Is AEGEE-Europe secretly American?” Simply said, the CIA (Corpus Iuridicum Aegeense) is a document with over a hundred pages containing all the rules which govern AEGEE-Europe. It is therefore considered as the legal framework of the Association, and all members are obliged to follow its provisions. Although no secret agents are involved in it, it is one of the most important documents. In the CIA, which you can read here, you can find for example the Statutes of AEGEE-Europe, the Working Formats of the different bodies and all kind of rules (General Rules, Rules of the Network Commission, Antennae Criteria, etc.).

Now that we know what the changes are about, we can continue to see which ones they actually are! The first two, ‘Improving the CIA one step at the time (6) and (7)’ were submitted by Joris Veenhuis, Claudio Gennaro and Glòria Llopart on behalf of the Juridical Commission and aim – as the name already suggest – to improve the CIA one step at a time. The first one, ‘Fixing small mistakes’, does so by fixing some mistakes that sneaked in over the years and clarifying the Organs of AEGEE-Europe. With this, you can think about mistakes like the wrong article number referred to due to other changes having been made over the years and some unclear things, like the difference between ‘ordinary members’ and ‘honorary members’. You can find all the changes and the reasons for them here.

The second proposal, ‘Charter of Honorary Members’, aims at improving the Charter of Honorary Members, because there turned out to be some questions about it. This proposal doesn’t really affect the content of the Charter, but does try to make it easier to read and understand. The Juridical Commission has also tried to make the Charter a bit smaller by removing some things that don’t really have to be regulated, like the administrative responsibility of the award. The exact changes to achieve an easier to understand Charter of Honorary Members can be found here.

The third proposal, ‘Abolir le français en tant que seconde langue officielle de l’Assemblée générale et des statuts des sections locales’, is submitted by Léa Charlet (Policy Officer on Gender Equality) and Paul Smits (Comité Directeur). It’s written in French to emphasize its aim, namely abolishing French as the official second language of AEGEE-Europe. When reading the CIA, you may notice that at the end of it there is also a translated version in French, and at several points in the CIA you  may find French being mentioned as an alternative language for English, for example as the official language of the Agora. Antennae and Working Groups also have to provide a copy of their statutes in English or French, which the proposers think is not necessary. They therefore propose to delete French as the second official language of AEGEE-Europe. All changes made to achieve that, can be found here.

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen