© Centre for European Studies - Alexandru
Ioan Cuza University of Iași
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roundtables.
University in society. Development and
integration at EU’s borderlines by dialog
and knowledge exchange.
The joint roundtables aimed at ‘outsourcing’ the
main results of the project to the stakeholders who
are not necessarily involved in the academic field:
policy-makers, civil society activists, professionals
and develop a favourable context for a tripartite
debate university-policymakers-society on specific
issues in EU Eastern borderlines to find jointly best
practices and solutions. The meetings addresed
specific topics on ENP and CBC as resulted from
research and exchange knowledge within the
network.
During the 4 years of the project, 32 round tables
were organized with 825 participants. To find out
more about these events please check the
newsletters page.
“EU Neighbours’ day – together for a
common future”.
The “EU Neighbours’ day – together for a common
future” will be a novel concept developed within our
network which will be organised in each of the
partner institutions on the 7th of May each year,
thus coinciding with the launching day of the
Eastern Partnership. This day will be organised in
order to celebrate the neighbourly relations The
highlights of the day will consist of different cultural
exhibitions having the ‘idea of Europe’ as
centrepiece, various artistic and cultural events,
debates about Europe providing explanations
about the EU integration process, answering
questions about what the EU actually means, how it
functions, an awarding ceremony for a planned
essay contest etc.
The organisation of such a day will have a positive
impact on relevant target groups (particularly young
academics) on improving knowledge about
European integration and the development of
professional competence in the field. Moreover,
such an event can have a strong potential for
generating transformative processes in society and
economy of neighbouring countries with long-term
impact of reducing border effects. From our
previous experiences and observations, we have
noticed that particularly among the wider public in
the neighbouring countries the knowledge about
the EU is still relatively poor. This has had a
detrimental effect on the efficiency of neighbouring
instruments and cross-border cooperation which
we seek to counter by offering explanations and
raising awareness about the positive implications of
the EU integration process.
Activity responsible: Sorin MAZILU (P1)
Results
The Neighbours’ day was a real reason of
celebration within the network, the organizers and
participants showing both interest and enthusiasm
for the activities included in the event. Each partner
designed its own approach for the event, the only
common nominator being the essay contest. As a
consequence, a friendly and constructive
competition was initiated within the network
partners in order to see who is able to organize the
most interesting and creative activities. Among the
activities that where organized, we mention:
treasure hunt on EU subjects, art exhibitions,
seminars and discussions panels, interactive
workshops, posters contests, etc. The event gain
rapidly popularity in each partner country, being
promoted by press, television, supermarket chains,
etc. The success of the activities was a very pleasant
surprise for us. For this reason, we plan in the
future to organize more learning opportunities of
this type, which brings along interesting
information, creativity and people from all partners.
Estimated no. of participants: 500