By Ada Georgescu
In the European committee, the chairs started by asking the delegates to introduce themselves, in hopes of making everyone a little more comfortable with the situation they're in. The delegates are people from all over the country, like Galati, Sibiu and Bucharest, all complete with different hobbies and passions. They’re between the ages of 14 and 18.
After 10 minutes, the mock session started. Mock Sessions are more so a test for the debates the delegates would be undergoing later through the day. The first topic (a less complex, fun one) was abortion proposed by Slovakia. Slovakia would speak up in all topics proposed, making themselves pretty respected by the other delegates off the bat: the perfect start. The chairs asked the delegate to propose a timespan of how much the debate should last for and how long each speaker may take up to state their opinion. In this case, the debate was 10 minutes long, 1 minute pro speaker. To wrap that up, the chairs made a speaker list. But as most people were pretty shy, only 5 out of the 20 assigned countries decided to participate: France, Denmark, Luxembourg, Hungary and Germany. The only delegate who didn’t approve of abortion was Luxembourg.
The next theme was pineapple on pizza: an easy topic, though one met with a lot of different opinions. After France proposed this, the other countries would decide through democracy if this subject should be debated or not. Most people decided in favour of it. This time, more delegates decided to participate, the atmosphere in the class being a lot more low-key and chill now. The participants were Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Slovakia, the UK, Croatia, Malta, Cyprus and France.
The last theme the ER addressed was milk before or after cereal: a very heavy subject with very sensitive opinions, naturally. The country that chose this topic was the Czech Republic, that decided 5 minutes and 45 seconds per speaker would be plenty. This time, 17 countries were pro and 3 were against speaking about this topic. The speakers were Luxembourg, Sweden, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Austria, Cyprus and Germany.
The real debate was set in motion. Portugal settled on the topic of migration crisis. The chairs got mad, because the delegates wouldn’t want to participate, tensing the atmosphere up significantly. After a heavy speech, 6 countries did after all decide to get more involved. Portugal presented a very confident opinion and nobody had any objections, Croatia wasn’t very present, but had some pretty good points. Finland was pretty shy, but, similarly to Croatia, made their opinion very clear.