More than twenty students from Poland, Romania, France, Great Britain and Germany attended this year's Allianz Summer Academy which took place in at the Allianz Management Institute, Allianz's corporate university. During the event, the students presented their own national reports related to the Academy’s topic, "Europe in a globalized world - new international dimensions after the EU reform treaty".
European students discuss globalization
To start, a five-member delegation from Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU) hosted a political "talk show" based on a popular German TV show. The group used four stereotypical attitudes towards immigrants as a way to present strategies for EU immigration and successful integration policy.
Students from Warsaw's Collegium Civitas presented their report on European energy policy, while Romanian students chose to feature the topic of a common foreign and security policy for Europe, including a case study on Kosovo.
The participants at the Allianz Summer Academy 2008
Working together in Europe-wide terms
The Summer Academy is designed to foster both knowledge sharing between the countries, as well as discussion to forge new ways of thinking, according to Michael Thoss. Thoss heads the Allianz Cultural Foundation which organizes the annual event. "The first part of the Summer Academy entails the conveyance of knowledge by way of the National Reports. The second part highlights an exchange of ideas and experience in transnational teams. Here the students leave their national niches and learn to think, debate and collaborate in Europe-wide terms," he explains.
According to Thoss, this collaboration process can also include a good portion of frustration. "Sometimes we deliberately put work and time pressure on the students, so that they experience how politicians in Brussels work and reach agreement." Thoss' personal observation: "And you can see differences in how the groups interact; for our Eastern European students, group awareness and consensus were of paramount importance, whereas students from the West were more likely to want to stand out as individuals."
Discussion was also supported by the Academy's welcoming committee: Interdisciplinary studies professor Robert Picht of the University of Bruges, Henning Schulte-Noelle, chairman of the Supervisory Board of Allianz SE, and Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger who heads Government Relations at Allianz SE.
For the next Allianz Summer Academy in 2009, apart from German, British, Italian and French students, participants from a Serbian university are likely to join.
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Michael Thoss: "Students have to leave their national niches"