Let’s Talk! Stories of Europe
EU – Foreign Control or Protector of Freedom?
Venue: Willy Brandt Centre – 18th January 9AM
Hosts: Mathilde, Marie, Maxim, Hannah
Sponsor: Pulse of Europe Wroclaw
The European Union’s ethical foundations have been laid on the principles of inclusion, tolerance, justice and solidarity but arising divisive forces within the Union are putting their solidity to the test. There are divergent opinions on what the EU should stand for and where its future lies. Its core values – liberal democracy, pluralism, rule of law and free speech – are being challenged like never before in the evolving socio-political situation:
“Is the European Union dying?”
“Is it something worth rescuing and fighting for?”
“What does European Union mean to you personally?”
The workshop – hosted by four European students – offered a platform where current concerns and questions over the fate of the EU were addressed and where possible outlooks were shared by an audience of international students.
In the opening segment the participants were involved in sociometry-based techniques with the scope of visually displaying their position on a scale given a set of questions:
“Given a triangle, where would you position yourselves between national, regional and European identity?
“How much influence does your home country have on the European Union and vice versa?”
Subsequently, the core part of the workshop saw the story-telling unfold according to the Sha:re approach whereby the participants were divided into smaller groups and encouraged to partake of their personal stories when asked the following question:
“Is the EU a protector of freedom or a foreign control for its member states?”
Thus the moderators spurred the groups to highlight their views and experiences by the use of drawings. The resulting exchange of stories and visual examples allowed to extrapolate several main themes to be pitched for the conclusive section: a collective debate which fostered a lively dialectic of opinions around what the students thought were the fundamental issues shaping the EU’s future.