Posted on 04 March 2015
On Thursday 26 February 2015, the 2015 edition of the educational programme destined to Secondary Schools (12 – 14 years of age) was launched at Villa Salviati, where the Historical Archives of the European Union welcomed 24 students from the Machiavelli School in Florence. The programme is held in the framework of the Municipality of Florence’s project “Le Chiavi della Citta”.
“Florentines: Citizens of Europe” is aimed at introducing secondary school children to the history, objectives and democratic basis of the European Union, to its governing institutions and to its archival memory at the European University Institute in Florence. The programme consists of two sessions, one in school and one at Villa Salviati. During the school session, the students are introduced to the history of the European Union and to its Institutions through a series of presentations, quizzes and interactive games. The second session at Villa Salviati explains what an Archive is, what do archivists do and what exactly are the Historical Archives of the European Union. It is followed by a session on deliberative democracy where the students learn to take part in a parliamentary debate. For this session the students become Members of a European Parliament and are called to debate on the concrete and controversial political issue: “Reducing public funds for renewable energy in the context of the economic crisis?”.
For the debate, the students split into four different political groups (Greens, Liberals, Progressives and Conservatives) and reason the argument the representative of the group is going to elaborate in front of their classmates. Afterwards, these arguments are discussed in a plenary session, which is followed by a final vote on the allocation of funds for renewable energy.
The debate by the students from the Machiavelli School raised an interesting and unexpected scenario. The official proposal consisting on a cut of 90% of the subsidies for renewable energy in order to redirect those resources to an industrial sector in crisis was rejected by a large majority of the participants after debate. Then, the so-called Progressive group put forward a first counterproposal, suggesting that instead of a drastic reduction in public funds to either side, a redistribution among economic sectors could be carried out. Thereby, industry, responsible for ensuring jobs at a short and medium term, would receive a 45% of the public funds, while the rest would go for the renewable energy research, which should take a great part in promoting a change in the economic model. This proposal convinced the Conservative group, while the so-called Greens and Liberals asked for bigger margins in favour of renewable energy. Throughout a constructive exchange of ideas, new proposals were laid out by all groups, which included in their aims redistribution to the agricultural sector, salary raises, tax cuts and subsidies for the unemployed.
The workshop ended with the final vote which was won by the Progressives group, which decided to give a 30% of the public funds to renewable energy, 25% to industry and 45% to promote and protect the agricultural sector and increase salaries.
This year, the programme “Florentines Citizens of Europe” will give a total of 280 students from Florence and surroundings the possibility to foster an active European Citizenship and know how deliberative democracy in Europe works.
More information on “Le Chiavi della Città”
Pictures from the visit in the HAEU's Flickr album