Slovenia hosts Europe's Youth Parliament

There are two European Parliament's - the real one which sits in Strasbourg and a smaller model of it - the European Youth parliament. The youth parliament recently convened in Slovenia giving students a chance to explore the workings of Europe's parliament first-hand.

The Youth Model European Parliament brought together 170 secondary school students from 28 European countries. Together with professors and mentors, they divided into various subcommittees to debate various current events. The exercise not only helped give participants a sense of what the European Parliament is like, but also allowed Europeans of various nationalities to interact, debate, and learn from one another. We talked to some of the participants to get a sense of how they were doing:

»I think it's going to be very interesting because, on the bus as well, I wanted to sleep first, but we started debating with people from other countries. And people have very interesting ideas and discussions happened a lot. Sometimes people agree, sometimes not, but it's interesting to talk about it.«

»I think it's very important for youth to know about politics and to be able to communicate with people from all over Europe, and to raise awareness of the issues that are important today.«

»It's an important event for youth to speak up to the European parliament, so they get to know what youth think in all of Europe.«

»Well, it's interesting because everyone has their own different opinions and they're all bringing them together to find one unified system that we all agree on. So, it's learning about different cultures, different people, learning how to respect different cultures and different ways of doing things.«