Educational news

26 students successfully complete second edition of BSoG Winter School on EU Policy-Making

From 7 to 18 February 2022, the Brussels School of Governance, in collaboration with the Vienna School for International Studies and the University of Vienna organised its second Winter School on EU Policy-Making. The Winter School is the virtual counterpart of our longstanding Summer School on EU Policy-Making. Twenty-six participants (+35% compared to the 2021 edition) of seventeen nationalities joined from locations across Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Luxembourg) and beyond (Australia, Georgia, Indonesia, South Korea). Together, they interacted in the two-week intensive online course to learn more about EU policy-making, governance and law, and its relation to other international organisations. The Winter School had a special focus on digital rights and diplomacy, touching on policy discussions related to freedom of expression, data protection, disinformation resilience, and platform responsibility.

A special feature of the Winter School during the first week was the simulation exercise. We invited students from our partner universities in the EUTOPIA alliance to join our exercise and simulated the EU ordinary legislative procedure for two days with thirty-seven students online. The students took on alter-ego roles as European Commissioners, national ministers, members of the European Parliament, tech executives, civil society and media and negotiated two sets of proposed amendments of the EU Digital Services Act (on a ban on targeted advertising for minors and an exemption of media from platform content moderation) for two days. In the second week, Winter School participants had the opportunity to interact with practitioners in the EU institutions.

The Winter School and simulation exercise are prime examples of our School’s aim to provide in-depth theoretical knowledge combined with practice-embedded and experiential learning, even amidst a global health crisis. Both the Winter School and EUTOPIA project are made possible with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

 

 

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.