Wednesday 14th March 2018

The second day of the workshop started with the talk of Mrs. Zoe West, a UK expert, who spoke about the reasons to be out of the EU and the alternatives. Particularly, she was focused on the ongoing projects within the Black Country, funding of the projects and how it was going to be affected by Brexit. She described two types of programs, ERDF and ESF, and how the investments of these funds were being distributed. She also explained the priority areas, i.e. the thematic concentrations of these funds, and the types of projects which were funded by these programs. Her speech was followed by the questions from the audience.

Second part of the program was “dictionary”. The participants were divided into four groups and each group was given questions to be answered briefly. The questions asked were mainly about the concepts, projects and terms related to EU such as Europe 2020, European Solidarity Corps, the EU values, services, programs, rights and the European Union in general. Each group prepared presentations and presented their answers to other groups and answered their questions.

The next part of the program was an oxford debate, where participants were divided into two groups and one of the groups had to defend the European Union, whereas the other group was against it. Groups first formed their arguments and then explained them to the opposite group and the audience, trying to justify their ideas. Next, they were asked questions by the audience, which they could answer, but didn’t have to. Then, the groups asked questions to each other, separately for every argument, to which this time they had to reply. In the end, the more convincing group won the debate.

At the end of the day, podcasts from the Macedonian participants were collected and the program was closed.