Deliberation about Europe and European values with International students and Polish and German pupils

The objective of our project is to help to counter this lack of discussion und insight regarding the European Union. We want to train about 20 Erasmus+ students in deliberation and in the ideas that underlie the European ideal and project. Then, in pairs of two, these students will each implement five workshops with 15 to 18-year-old pupils from Germany and Poland, the second target group of our project. The workshops will take place evenly divided in rural areas on both sides of the German-Polish border. They are supervised by at least one member of Social Science Works. Our aim ist that Erasmus+ students not only study in an other European country, but that they reflect on the idea of the European Union and its values. And, by helding workshops with pupils, implement the idea of an international student exchange: exchange of ideas, values, experiences. Additionally, these pupils will become multiplicators within their peer group. When these three-hour workshops have each 20 participants, we will reach about 1000 adolescents per year. In the workshops several fundamental questions will be addressed: What does it mean to be European? Is there something like a European identity? What do I have to do with the EU? Is European integration a threat or an opportunity? What do we as citizens expect of the EU? Which issues and problems should the EU address or not address? What does a democratic EU need? What was the original idea of the EU? Why she was founded? Regarding the last two questions the groups will thematize historical facts regarding Germany and Poland as well as the countries the students come from. Therefore and in order to create an European exchange the project has to be transnationally. As in the more than 150 workshops Social Science Works has implemented so far, the exchanges will be deliberative. Deliberation is a political communication where, via an open and courteous exchange of information, ideas, views and values, preferences are discovered, understood, contextualized and developed. Deliberation is not about the translation of undisputed, fixed preferences of individuals into collective decisions and policies, but about the mutual reflection and development of informed preferences regarding the public cause. Concomitantly, deliberation strengthens the notions and emotions of political community, civility and citizenship that national and supranational democratic systems like the EU need to thrive. In order to recruit people in Poland, we still need a partner organisation close to the German border.