From 27 to 31 July, a team of five CEU students from the Department of Public Policy and the Department of History, Zakarya God, Adrienn Nyircsak, Julia Michalsky, Sudish Niroula, and James Wilhelm, represented CEU at the Allianz Summer Academy on Europe. The Academy, organized and funded by the Allianz Cultural Foundation, aims to create a framework in which future leaders from five major universities work together analyzing challenges and elaborating individual and collective strategies for the future of Europe.
The Academy takes place at Kempfenhausen, on Starnberg Lake, outside of Munich. In 2013, the other participating universities were the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva), the University of Oxford, Princeton University, and Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich). The theme was ‘Europe in a Changing World order – future economic and political architectures’.
During the 2012-2013 academic year, the members of the CEU team, under the supervision of Marie-Pierre Granger (Department of Public Policy), worked together on the preparation of a report entitled ‘Striving for an “Arab Summer”- Possibilities for EU-MENA Cooperation in the Field of Energy, Migration, and Education’, which they presented on the first day of the Academy to their colleagues from the other participating universities, members of the Allianz Cultural Foundation, and editors of the Open Citizenship journal. They attended a keynote speech by Stefan Kornelius, head of International Relationships at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, on the challenges and risks of a German leadership role in Europe and participated actively in the following discussions. During the second part of the Academy, the CEU students got into working groups with their colleagues from the other universities to formulate policy recommendations on a number of identified topics. The last session was devoted to the drafting of a joint manifesto.
The CEU team is now preparing a condensed version of their report for publication. They have become members of the Alumni Network of the Allianz Cultural Foundation. Through this network, they can take part in regular alumni meetings, symposiums and events on selected European topics, develop joint projects which contribute to European integration and apply for financial support from the Foundation to carry out these projects.