KARLSRUHE-STRASBOURG 2015
Our next MEC is being planned by Karlsruhe School and the European Parliament, and will take place on 22-24 March 2015. This will be a Council of Ministers from the 28 member states and the Commission. Details of countries, teams and the provisional agenda are being prepared.
HOW MEC WORKS
Each of the 13 European Schools sends one or more delegations of students to the MEC, each of which represents one of the EU's member states. The country represented has nothing to do with the location of the school; for example, the Luxembourg delegation may represent Italy, France or Malta, while Luxembourg itself may be "played" by students from Varese. Students of all nationalities make up the respective delegations.
Each delegation has its representative for each of the councils, e.g. Head of State, Foreign Affairs, Economics and Finance, Home and Justice, Energy and Environment. Additionally, the European Commission is represented in the simulation, as in real life.
Two schools, Luxembourg and Culham (UK), also provide a team of journalists. Each school produces several issues of a newspaper (often competing to some extent) reporting on the Councils, which are distributed around all the delegates. These papers are edited by one or two of the students. Their names are usually a play on words, such as "EUtopia" or "Eurostar". The journalists address the issues and events of the councils from a variety of angles.
The councils discuss and amend proposals put forward before the MEC by the Presidency (the member state which is presiding over the Council at the time) and the Commission. These are then symbolically put together and signed at the end of the MEC by the heads of state.
Officially, the MEC is held in the three working languages of the European Schools (English, German and French). In practice this is made possible by interpreters (as in the real European Council). In the absence of interpreters, English is often (though not invariably) used as the de facto working language. The newspapers strive to report equally in all three languages, though once again English often dominates.
RECENT EVENTS
- 1996: Munich, Germany
- 1997: Copenhague, Denmark
- 1999: Frankfurt, Germany
- 2000: Munich, Germany
- 2001: Madrid, Spain
- 2002: Göteborg, Sweden (There is no European School in Sweden; the Swedish school which hosted the MEC has been taking part ever since)
- 2003: Munich, Germany (European Patent Office)
- 2004: Luxembourg (MEP)
- 2005: Alicante, Spain (First MEC with 25 member states)
- 2006: Brussels (Eurocontrol)
- 2007: Göteborg, Sweden (Göteborg City Council)
- 2008: Alicante, Spain (OHIM/OAMI)
- 2009: Brussels, Belgium (25th Anniversary, held in European Parliament)
- 2010: Alicante, Spain (OHIM/OAMI)
- 2011: Varese, Italy (Joint Research Centre)
- 2012: Munich, Germany (European Patent Office)
- 2014: Brussels (Eurocontrol)
