On Tuesday, 30th of April, we had the chance to receive a guest from Europe House, Asher Jacobsberg, who went through a presentation about the European Parliament. He explained to us how it worked in terms of committees it was separated into, who focused on specific issues in the EU. This was really interesting because beforehand we thought that the EU was just one big body and parliament, from which all decisions were made. We didn’t realise it worked at such a large scale. He also recounted the history of the EU, which was new for us because we learnt why and how it came to be.

One of the first activities we did was bingo where we had to find each country that matched the descriptions. We did this by running around frantically, trying to find the countries needed and comparing our answers. The goal was to find all the countries. This allowed us to learn new interesting facts about many different countries and make us work together. After having found the correct countries, we were given a prize.

He also organised a debate. This was a great opportunity for us, because most of us had never debated before. We each got assigned a country with some information about it. First, we had to choose an area or a problem in which we were most interested in or we thought was the most important issue to tackle in the EU. Everyone stood in front of their chosen topic and in turns, we explained why we chose this issue. It was really interesting to listen to everyone’s different opinions. Afterwards, we got separated into our different parties, depending on the leader of the country we got assigned at the start. We each chose an issue we wanted to tackle and proposed a solution to the problem. This task enabled us to communicate with others and work together to achieve the best solution possible. One group at a time, we presented our ideas in a persuasive way, in order to get more votes from other parties. At the end of each proposal, we had to vote if we were for, against or neutral to the idea. The party that received the most positive votes won. Presenting to the other parties improved our public speaking skills as well as our persuasive skills. The voting for the ideas improved our critical thinking skills and helped us have a stronger opinion.

In conclusion, this visit gave us a knowledgeable introduction into how the EU parliament works and also how decisions are made within the EU.