On 28 and 29 May 2013 students from Vienna Business School Schoenborngasse, Privatgymnasium St. Ursula and Theresianische Akademie Wien took part in the eighth edition of “My Europe”. They discussed European affairs with experts from economics, academia as well as politics and learned from journalists how to write a good article.

Richard Kuehnel (Representation of the European Commission in Austria), and Catherine Danielopol-Hofer (Austrian Ministry of Education) welcomed the students. Kristina Countess Pilati (Frankfurter Zukunftsrat) introduced the initiative “My Europe”. She was followed by Dr. Barbara Kolm (Austrian Economics Centre) who gave an inspiring talk about the challenges awaiting Europe’s youth. Paul Schmidt (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Europapolitik) then presented five rumours about the European Union and Georg Feldscher (Raiffeisen Bank International AG) shared his knowledge on the euro and the impact of banks on everyday life in Europe. As follow-up to the experts’ talks, Dr. Tabea Scheel of Vienna University led an interactive session that linked the topics discussed in the morning to the teenagers ideas of Europe.

The second day of the workshop took place at the editorial offfice of Der Standard. Various journalists gave insight in the daily work at a big Austrian newspaper – in both print and online. The teenagers learned about the characteristics of the media landscape in Austria and had the chance to ask Managing Editor Eric Frey about the process of creating a daily newspaper. A guided tour of the brandnew editorial office as well as a session on news writing completed the workshop.

“My Europe” in Austria is under the patronage of Dr. Claudia Schmied (Federal Minister for Education, Arts and Culture).