From 5 to 16 February 2024, The Brussels School of Governance organized its fourth Jean Monnet Winter School on EU Policy-Making. Twenty-two participants of twelve nationalities joined online from across Europe and beyond (Belgium, China, Ethiopia, France, Italy, Peru, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Ukraine, and the United States of America). They interacted in a two-week intensive course learning more about the functioning of the EU, its decision-making process and key policy areas. The 2024 edition of the Winter School, themed around Analysing digital rights and diplomacy in today’s EU, allowed students to partake in a ‘crash course’ on policy discussions related to freedom of expression, data governance, artificial intelligence, disinformation resilience, platform responsibility, and digital development.
In conclusion to a first week dense on lectures and interaction with practitioners, the participants had the opportunity to participate in an online policy panel on the role of platforms and AI in elections with representatives from the European Commission DG RTD, Meta’s Stakeholder Engagement Team and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. During the second week, Winter School participants and students from EUTOPIA alliance partnership universities joined together for a two-day policy simulation exercise. Participants took on alter-ego roles as leaders of European institutions, Commissioners, national ministers, Members of the European Parliament, tech executives, civil society representatives or journalists, and enacted the European Union policy-making process with inter-institutional negotiations on the European Media Freedom Act. The exercise focused on questions around content moderation on online platforms.
Throughout the two weeks, students had the chance to interact with policy practitioners from various EU institutions during the exclusive insights sessions, and to learn and discuss about current affairs as well as the future of the EU in the in-depth lectures and workshops.
The Winter School and the policy simulation exercise are prime examples of our School’s aim to provide in-depth theoretical knowledge combined with practice-embedded and experiential learning. Both the Winter School and EUTOPIA project are made possible with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
