Hello Reddit!
This is Jimmy (24), Director General, and Irina (22), Deputy Director General, and we are here to talk about the project we lead: Model European Union Strasbourg, or MEUS for short. MEUS is organized by a volunteer team of 50 students young professionals from all around the world. We coordinate this team and spend most of our free time working on making MEUS more successful. This means a lot of conference calls, a lot of decision-making outside our comfort zone and of course a lot of responsibility: we work (autonomously) with and inside the European institutions, our annual budget usually exceeds 100k€, and we are in charge of a political education project with 14 years of history.
What is MEUS? Well, the opportunity to step inside the shoes of a stakeholder in the EU decision-making process doesn’t offer itself all too often to the average citizen. MEUS exists to change that.
As a participant at MEUS, you get to take on one of eight different roles for a week-long simulation of the EU: MEPs and Ministers discuss two legislative proposals and propose amendments according to their interests, aiming at reaching consensus between the two institutions, while Interest Representatives try to push forward their agenda and influence the final decision on the two pieces of legislation. Additionally, News Editors scrutinize the politicians’ every move while Video Journalists and Photographers carefully document the events visually. At the same time, Interpreters ensure accurate and engaging simultaneous interpretation of the whole process in as many as 10 languages.
Taking place inside the European Parliament in Strasbourg since 2007, MEUS is the oldest EU simulation and gathers around 200 participants from over 40 countries every year. MEUS 2020 will take place from 14 to 21 March and the debates will tackle two different topics: the reduction of CO2 emissions from cars and the rights of customers when making purchases online.
If you will be between 18 and 27 years old in March 2020 and want to debate with 200 young people in Strasbourg for a week, apply here until 15 December:
https://meu-strasbourg.org/apply
Now ask us anything! It can be about the simulation, about the organization of the event, about fundraising, about EU politics, or even about favorite ice cream flavors. Let's talk!
Note: We will collect questions until tomorrow (07/12) at noon and then start answering!
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