The Future of Europe in the focus of an euroregional seminar

On 12 and 13 September, another edition of the interdisciplinary Trento Innsbruck European Research Seminar (TIERS), funded by the Euregio Mobility Fund, took place at the University of Innsbruck. Researchers from the universities of Trento, Innsbruck, Bolzano and Eurac research met for the first time in a long time in person and with other colleagues connected via video chat. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the possibilities arising from the Conference on the Future of Europe for closer cooperation in teaching and research.
After the welcoming words by Prof. Esther Happacher (Univ. Innsbruck), Prof. Annegret Eppler from Kehl University of Applied Sciences (Germany) gave an impulse lecture on integration and disintegration in the European Union, as the wider context in which the current Conference on the Future of Europe fits in. This was followed by a more detailed explanation of the website set up by the European Union especially for this conference, which is intended to enable broad participation in the discussion on the future of Europe, as anyone and everyone can submit their contributions on the future of Europe there.
In the discussion that followed, the effectiveness of this participation opportunity was discussed. In the further course of the seminar, it was decided to use the occasion to create a cross-border, cross-university and cross-disciplinary project for students to express, develop and exchange ideas about the future of Europe. Accompanied by the professional expertise of the researchers involved in TIERS, the students will be enabled to work together autonomously on their ideas on topics such as climate change and the environment, digital transformation, work or migration in various groups structured according to the themes of the conference for the future of Europe. The form that the work on the individual topics takes shall be left to the creativity of the individual groups. After their presentation by the students, the results shall be submitted to the Conference on the Future of Europe via the website and in this way will flow into the debate at European level. 
The initiative will be presented to the students of the participating universities in a kick-off event organised by the School of International Studies of the University of Trento in autumn.