Exciting discussions and an open-air cinema in the Royal Gardens of Warsaw

Warsaw | Warsaw’s Royal Gardens – Łazienki Królewskie – have once again become the place of the deliberation as the fifth stop of the Remember Tour took place there. Thanks to some participants from non-EU countries, we’ve had the unique chance to take a look at Europe from different perspectives. The whole event was summed-up by the outdoor cinema. Pawel Bacal from our local partner organisation Polska Fundacja im. Roberta Schumana sahres his impressions.

The Royal Gardens, located at the centre of Poland’s capital city, are known mostly because of Poland’s last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski. He chose this place to be his summer residence and had been organising there the famous “Thursday meetings”.

During those events, he’d been discussing several aspects of the functioning of the state with the most influential people of that time. Those meetings, among many other things, resulted in great reforms of the state, including Europe’s first constitution – Constitution of the 3rd May. Therefore, it seemed like a good idea to hold the discussion in the Royal Gardens one more time. The event was organised in cooperation with our local partner, the Polish Robert Schuman Foundation.

We’ve started the discussion by letting the participants express their feelings about Europe and it’s future. Especially the youngest of the attendees have pointed out that it is hard to say what the basic goal of today’s Europe is.

Older generations could say that Europe is about peace or, in the later decades, establishing the common market – but for the youth these achievements are so obvious and natural that they are not treated as something special.

Thanks to some participants from non-EU countries, we’ve had the opportunity to see several perceptions of Europe.

It turns out that the EU, seen from the outside, is a great example of cooperation and therefore its example should be followed by other countries. At the same time most of our European attendees have focused rather on the problems which the EU is facing right now.

One of the most important problems brought up by the participants was the lack of knowledge about Europe and the opportunities it is offering us. We’ve agreed that the national states very often try to blame the EU for their own mistakes – the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic was just one of the examples.

Moreover, the eurosceptics can take advantage of such a situation and successfully convince people to their vision – this is exactly what happened in Great Britain’s case, as some of the attendees have pointed out. When it comes to the solution to the small level of ciitizen’s awareness, the participants have underlined the role of every person who has some european experience. If such people will be sharing their feelings about Europe to their peers, it could have a much better impact than many information campaigns.

Our fruitful discussion had to end at some point, but that was not the end of the whole event, because our local partner also organized the open air cinema. Our participants, but also other passers-by, had the opportunity to see the film series (Bad) Weddings 2.

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Here are our impressions from Warsaw once again summarized in a video. Have fun 🙂