The Bigger, The Better? Speakers

Hi all!

My name is Aidan Kelly from Ireland and I’m here to tell you all about my workshop “The Bigger, The Better?” as part of EYMD 2008.

This workshop deals with all aspects of EU enlargement and I’ve got to say we’ve had some very interesting discussions so far! Today alone, we’ve had three guest speakers, each with very different opinions. The speakers themselves and their topics were designed to spark debate and they certainly achieved that!

Earlier we spoke to Professor Gyorgy Schopflin, a Hungarian MEP, who told us about the various ideologies and cultures across Europe and how important it was that the EU remained designed for European countries.

Next up was Mr Aleksander Mitic, Brussels correspondant with the Serbian national News Agency. He imspired great debate after he mentioned that he believes Kosovo should remain part of  Serbia. Many participants disagreed with his point, so it was interesting for someone like me to see both points of view.

Lastly, we had Mr Guldener Somermut who spoke of Turkeys aspirations to join the Union. It was another fascinating debate and one which will be a topic of conversation for many years to come, no doubt.

 

The workshop has been getting along great – we’re all in high spirits and laughs are never far away. We ‘have the craic’ to use an Irish expression for fun!

Well that’s it for today. I must go finish my article for our tabloid newspaper- keep an eye out for it on the website!

Keep safe!

Aidan

Making a tabloid!

It’s actually my first time that I’m making a tabloid newspaper article. For 5 years I was writting serious stuff about EU on the national TV website so it was kind of hard to get in touch with the concept.

In our workshop, The Bigger the better, we have to prepare articles and interviews for a tabloid newspaper. On thursday we were still deciding on how we’re gonna name it, but probably will be something like EUscandal or similar. Each one of us had to write a interesting, sort of low-brainer or even trash story, for the newspaper, but some of us also made an interview. I wrote an article for the sport section of the tabloid about EU football superteam. The others are writting about stereotypes in the EU, harsh visa-regimes etc. I think it will be a very interesiting piece of material, worth reading. Full of scandals and shocking stories!

So, we also had some sort of multicultural editorial meeting at the beginning that really created a great atmosphere and gave us an experience of something we’re not used to every day back home. After this day of international journalist team experience I think I would really want to work in a team as such professionally some time in the near future!

I also uploaded some pictures from todays workshop, if you are interested.

Now of to Brussels safari, yeaah!

Mitja, Slovenia