Because of the COVID-19 pandemic students in many countries have had to stop attending classes in person and stay at home. This meant our EU Back2School and Back2University initiatives had to be discontinued as well. But we have adapted our initiatives to the new distance learning systems being used by schools and universities across Europe, and since April students have once again been able to meet with staff from the Council of the EU via video conference.

These programmes offer students the opportunity to meet EU officials in their own classroom. Visiting staff share their inside knowledge about how the EU works and answer questions. With these programmes, we offer you a different way to learn about the EU and its policies, and discover educational and other programmes that are open to young people.

The first virtual visits have taken place with schools in Italy. EU officials connected right from their own living rooms to talk about the EU in general, but also about the latest developments: what the EU is doing to fight the coronavirus and what the road to economic recovery will look like.

And the ‘EU ambassadors’ among our staff have also shared their personal experience of working towards European integration. For them, motivating and inspiring young people to look at things from a European perspective is a matter close to their hearts.

“I found it very exciting to be, even for just a couple of hours, an ‘ambassador’ of the EU to the younger generations (though not that much younger than me). I am also glad I was able to give concrete examples of the fact that the EU has been moving fast in this crisis, and that it is not just a big, static, bureaucratic machine, as it is often presented in the national media,” said Luca Porcella, Administrator for Agricultural Policy at the General Secretariat of the Council.

Do you have questions about the initiative? Write to us!