Celebrating Europe Day

Europe Day, held on 9 May every year, celebrates peace and unity in Europe.

Right now, that is something we need to take stock of and think about what we can do to get back to a situation of ‘peace and unity’.

You can use this occasion to celebrate what unites us as the peoples and nations of Europe. You could think about the positive aspects of life in Europe:

  • Democracy
  • Human rights
  • Culture

Or the shared challenges that we are facing:

  • War in Ukraine
  • Supporting refugees
  • Climate crisis

You could approach Europe Day in one of two ways: a time for debate, or a time for fun celebration, or maybe a mixture of the two. Here are a few ideas we’ve got from EPAS schools around the UK and Europe:

Image from: Let’s Celebrate Europe Day

Debate and challenge

  • European Parliamentary debates: Lunchtime debates where a key issue facing the European Parliament is debated by students, staff or experts brought in for the occasion. This can be extended by having 7 debaters each tasked with representing the point of view of one of the political groups in the European Parliament.
  • Euro debates: Set up session where a big question about Europe and the EU is debated by everyone in the room, either in small groups, or by taking points from people across the room. A short initial presentation is useful to spur wider debate. Some propositions you might want to debate:
    • As Europeans, more unites us than divides us
    • The essential European values are…
    • We need a ‘United States of Europe’
    • The EU needs an army
  • Day of Action: Have Europe Day as a ‘Day of Action’ encourage groups to form to campaign on issues that they care about. Almost any issue that matters to young people will have a European dimension. Set them up with the means to research the issue, plan their campaign and contact the European Parliament and UK Government to share their views.

Fun events

  • Euros-style sports events: split into teams representing different European nations, compete wearing the national colours of those nations in a knockout competition.
  • European food week/day: groups bring in food to share from a different European region each day for a week – or work with the school kitchen to provide European flavours to school dinners.
  • European greetings: Each class is taught how to greet people in a different European language. They are encouraged to greet everyone in their learned language that day.
  • Euro-fair: Groups are given different European nations to research and represent. At lunch time each group has a stall where they share information – fun facts, language titbits, and maybe foo – about the nation they have researched.
  • Euro quiz: During form time, a quiz is sent round to each class. Classes to compete to see who has the best Euro-knowledge. Rounds could include: identifying flags; placing countries in order of size, GDP, etc.; identifying countries by outline; working out which language is from which country.

Ukraine, Russia and the Council of Europe

Europe Day isn’t just celebrated by the European Union, it’s also an important occasion for the Council of Europe, of which the UK and Ukraine are both part. Russia was too, but had its voting rights removed when it annexed Crimea and its membership was terminated when it invaded Ukraine.

This year in particular you might want to create events that show your support for peace in Europe and solidarity with those displaced or injured by war:

  • Meetings with refugees to understand their stories
  • Fundraising or creating care packages for those displaced by war
  • Learning about the history of European wars: how they’ve escalated and how they’ve ended
  • Having presentation by organisations working for peace and reconciliation in Europe

More ideas and resources

Published on

by

Asher

Read more articles about

, ,

,