Young Europeans dissatisfied with performance of Foreign Policy Makers!

An overwhelming majority of young Europeans feel uninformed about how decisions on EU foreign policy are made.

The Europe & Me online magazine conducted a survey among more than 6,500 young Europeans to investigate their views on EU foreign policy. Representatives of the Young Europeans will make a difference at this year’s “Berliner Forum Außenpolitik” (Berlin Foreign Policy Forum), an influential gathering on European foreign policy organised by the Körber Foundation in cooperation with the German Federal Foreign Office which will take place in Berlin on November 29th.

Make the voice of young people heard in European politics!

Young Europeans under the age of 30 are invited to take part in the online survey of the young online magazine Europe & Me and thus support European youth to win a bet with European foreign policy makers. The Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the Körber Foundation are hosting the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum on November 29th where many prominent European foreign policy makers are attending, among them the German Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmitri Rogosin (Russian ambassador to NATO), Jürgen Trittin (Chairman of the Bündis 90/Die Grünen parliamentary party) and others. Young Europeans are asked to give their thoughts before and during the conference! But the policy makers are convinced that European youth to a big extend is not interested in foreign policy and, therefore, doesn´t have much to contribute …
So Europe & Me bet with one of the policy makers involved in the conference that there are at least 10,000 young Europeans (under 30 years of age) who had something to say on Europe and Foreign Policy. If Europe & Me achieves this by end of October, a delegation of young Europeans will be invited to the conference, present the results of the survey and discuss them with foreign ministers and foreign policy makers of  Europe. So join the survey, share your thoughts, tell a friend and let European youth WIN THE BET. You don’t have to be an expert, just have a voice!

“Do you speak European?” workshop – apply now!

What makes you feel European? When you read a Spanish novel, when you apply for a job in Finland, when you eat Hungarian langos or French roquefort? And anyway – what is Europe? Maybe it’s an idea rather than a place, or maybe it’s just something you experience every day of your life.

We’re inviting you to our week-long workshop, where about 30 young Europeans will be investigating what Europe means to us. Which books should every European read? Is there such a thing as “European English”? How do young Europeans plan their future? These are some of the questions we’ll be asking – and we’ll be creating some multimedia answers such as videos, photos and a European Dictionary, all of which we are hoping to publish.

The “Do you speak European?” workshop will take place in Berlin, a city which has been shaped by Europe’s turbulent past. It will run from the 15th to the 22nd of December. To apply, you should:

- Be between 18 and 30

- Live in Poland, Spain, Romania, Turkey, Germany or the UK. (If you don’t live in one of these countries but you really want to attend the workshop, contact us. We might be able to make exceptions!)

All expenses will be covered, apart from a fee of 70 euros if you’re coming from Germany and the UK, or 35 euros from other eligible countries. The workshop is sponsored by the EU Youth in Action programme and the Allianz Cultural Foundation. It’s open to everyone, not just E&M people, so tell your friends…

Want to join us and discover your personal Europe? Go to www.europeandme.eu/workshop and apply now! Or contact us at application@europeandme.eu to find out more.

The deadline for applications is the 26th of September.

In cooperation with:

This project is financed with support from the European Union through the program YOUTH IN ACTION. The content of this project does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the national agency JUGEND für Europa and they cannot be held responsible for them.

Time to say good bye

With the Berlin academy, the last EUSTORY academy in 2011 has ended. So I give the word again to Jorge, for the last time this summer…:

Our last day started very relaxed. We commented satisfactorily the interview with Lev Alexandrovich; the results and his answers. Also, we had a conference with a representative of  the Fond “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ), which tries to compensate people affected during WWII because of the Nazi oppression.

I liked it very much because on my point of view, it was very realistic, the representative was very clear about the lack of money and they are aware that in many cases, trying to compensate the suffering of a person who, for example spent four years in a concentration camp is derisory. Anyway, money is symbolic and the most important thing is the recognition of the fault by government and the companies which form the foundation.

Our last work was developing a project in order to find a way of compensation to war prisoners. We had very good ideas, but finally all of them are utopias. The government of the involved countries are the responsible for finding a compensation for this people.

After staying all together during the night writing letters to each other, we decided that it was time to show the typical dances of our countries. Anton began (despite not having boots, hair hat and sable) with Cossack dances. It was very funny!

We continue with dances from Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland… in our case we taught how to dance Pasodoble (easier than Flamenco). I have to say that Manolo Escobar, our most famous Pasodoble Singer, would be proud of everybody. Furthermore, Oliver and Caro are prepared to go to Spain and dance it!!!!

We were exhausted of dancing so some of watched a film, others continue writing letters to everybody, taking our last photos together and inviting everybody to our countries.

I would have continued there but my body was begging going to sleep.

Time to say goodbye:

Next morning was strange. Everybody knew that we were living our last moments together. After many hugs and farewells it was time to go. A bus was waiting for us, so short time after we were on the entry to the airport. We stared each other, said goodbye and hoping meeting again in our lives despite knowing that we live too far in different countries.

After delays and trains, I arrive to Spain at 18:00.

I have to thank the wonderful team we had. It has been an unforgettable experience. Tina, Frank, Pieter, thank you again. I hope see you again. You were very good with us, so we are very glad to had you as supervisors.

I recommend everybody going to a Eustory Academy. On this experience, I have met people (now friends) from over Europe, and also worked in a very interesting topic on a different way as usual in school. Thanks to this and other similar experiences, it has been the greatest summer in my life.

Thank you very much.

Jorge

Day 5: Do you know anything about Domovoj?

I received this text from Jorge at 2.01 am, poor exploited volunteer…

Anton (Russia) would say: “Many people ask me: Anton, do you know anything about Domovoj?”In this case we didn’t know anything about Domovoj (who can change his faces, is made of chocolate bars and can reborn 10 times), but also we didn’t know anything about the interesting live and experiences of Lev Alexsandrovitch Netto, the prisoner of war.

It has been a very hard day for us and for Lev Alexsandrovitch. 6 hours of interview and it wasn’t enough time to ask him all the questions we had prepared. Kindly, he answered them being helped by an interpreter. It’s very difficult to sum up all that information but we got many unexpected answers.

At the beginning you can imagine some of them because maybe you could have seen something in a film for example, but I didn’t expected many answers, mainly about his time after the war in a Gulag and how was he treated by the Soviet Government (his country) in order to keep him in the camp like using torture (because they thought that he was a traitor). Something which impressed me was how people can change during a war and what he answered to the question “How did you feel about killing?”. It was “on that situation there are not social rules, you have to kill the enemy or he will kill you. Everything is like choreography, an orchestra”. Furthermore, it’s very disturbing when he tells how his friends were shot next to him and he stained of their blood and the difficult situations he lived before, during and after the war.

Anyways we have seen that Lev Alexsandrovitch is a very good person who doesn’t have any prejudices for people who took part on the war, and also, nowadays he only wants to leave in peace but at the same time, remember everybody that there were many POWs like him who weren’t recognized as soldiers who tried to defend his country but as a traitor, so we thank him for this unrepeatable opportunity to ask him about his life experiences and wish the best for him.

Now is time to go to bed, but remember: be careful whit Domovoj. He is staring at you during the night!

Day 4: From 500 to 155 questions

Between 400 and 500 interview questions were written this morning for “our” witness. After throwing away some of them such as  “How was the weather like during three years?” (Kaspars was proud of it) we took 155 and the others were sold to Financial Times and New York Times. After earning the millions we needed to buy our mansions in Ibiza we were prepared to interview Lev Alexsandrovitch Netto, our witness.

He was prisoner in a POWs camp between 1944 and 1945 because he was soldier of the Red Army, but after the end of the war he was taken to another one (a Goulag) because for Stalin, survival prisoners from war must have been traitors. Nowadays he is 86.

Lev came here some days ago in order to let us interview him about his experiences during WWII and also as a Soviet POW, so today, between “exhibitionists and streetlights” [energizing game] we have prepared the whole interview: questions, structure, and an also we have practiced it with a very special stuntwoman instead of Mr. Netto, Gabriele Woidelko, the Eustory director, who is visiting us for a couple of days.

Tomorrow is the day of the interview so we hope everything is correct. In addiction we thank this man for coming here and giving us the opportunity to deal with a “flesh and bond” person who lived first-hand the dark events of the past.

The problem is that we have 155 questions and a minimum of 3 minutes per question, and that is… a lot.  But don’t worry, in some months, you could buy the whole interview in 50 collectible DVDs in your nearest shop!