BerlinMUN Conference 2015

MUN Mannheim member Max Welz used his summer holidays to participate at BerlINMUN, which was held in german capital Berlin in the first week of August. He represented the delegate of Italy in the Council of the European Union which dealt with the topic „Mare Europaeum - The need for a cohesive european migration strategy“ discussing a reform of european asylum policy. As we all know, refugees are daily drowning in the Mediterranean during their attempt to reach Europe, so this issue urgently needs to be discussed in real politics as well.

The whole committee did a laudable work of representing the views and claims of their respective countries. Correspondingly there have been two opposing blocks: Southern Europe demanding a quota system for an allocation of refugees and financial aid by the EU and the protectionist block led by the UK and Hungary. After five days of hard and sometimes loud debating in which any delegate tried to influence every working paper or draft resolution as much as possible, the committee -with a considerable majority- passed a resolution reforming the Dublin III agreement by introducing a quota system managing the allocation of refugees over the entire EU and a new naval mission to both rescue drowning refugees and arrest traffickers.

Besides the committee work Max spent his time in Berlin visiting the city and attending socials in which he not only made a lot of new friends but got to know the city from a variety of perspectives - For example a bad-taste-party in Moabit, pub crawls in Kreuzberg or dinner in Spandau.

As in any other conference, he enjoyed his time there and cannot wait to participate at his next MUN!