The EU-Council and EU-Parliament committees
by Jana Pecikiewicz
An institution inside an institution – that is how the EU Parliament and EU Council committees at the Model United Nations can be described. The simulation of one of the biggest international political organisations is taking place at Hamburg, Germany’s second biggest city.
The topics that became relevant for the two European committees this morning were amongst others asylum regulations, which the German and Austrian delegates characterised as changeable. According to them, the best solution would be to help developing countries to establish measures for improving life-conditions and thus diminish the number of asylum-seekers. Concerning the main topic of the HamMUN simulation – sustainability – genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were also part of the discussions. A third issue which dominated the morning session was the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP). TTIP required more than just a debate. Therefore some background information was presented by an expert, Prof. Dr. Henning Klodt from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He stressed the potentials, but also the risks of liberated World Trade. The TTIP is controversial because of the secretive way the authorities discuss it. By freeing the trade, limits for procedures as fracking or usage of GMOs can also be lowered.
The delegate Allarik Curtis was pleased with the discussion in the morning. “Especially towards the end, the debate got pretty heated. We wanted to find compromises and suddenly realized, that we completely disagree, which was really funny.” The student of University of New York in Prague represents Malta in the EU Council Committee. “My task is basically to plead for the help from the more powerful countries.” Allarik, who is Half-Indonesian and Half-Australian, finds his position as smaller EU-member particularly interesting.
Sasha Johnson from the University of Maastricht represents Spain in the EU – council simulation. She thinks that the session “is going quite good”. Nevertheless there are a lot of formulary questions to be answered. “There are two groups: One group is tackling the core of the topics, the other is just trying to define everything and argues about the criteria of a definition.” The student from Australia is not sure, whether the committee is able to achieve diplomatic goals in time, but remains positive.
