Latest posts by Hans Blokland (see all)
- German bureaucracy in the integration of newcomers and how it can be reduced. - July 9, 2025
- Citizens’ dialogue in Paulinenaue once again well attended: the requirement to justify positions rationally is what unites us Europeans. - June 25, 2025
- New BAMF project launched by SSW: Building bridges, volunteering for migrants and against discrimination - June 19, 2025
Together with 18 high school students and citizens, Social Science Works was at the German Foreign Office to discuss the values and the future of the European Union. Several politicians and civil servants were present to answer their questions. Before they visited the Foreign Office, the students and citizens had prepared their questions in four workgroups. They choose to concentrate on (1) the rule of 
law, human rights and separation of powers, (2) migration and population aging, (3) security and defense (4) climate change and renewable energy. Telling was again that the participants saw the European Union in the first place as a community of values, and not as an economic project. The citizens formulated each of their questions in about 30 seconds. For the answers especially the politicians regularly took more than 10 minutes. It’s true, things are often terribly complicated, but as the great German twitterer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, already noticed: “In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister”. We will report on the project later again.
