The 5th and the 9th of May we celebrate twice the Europe Day.
Days that have been dedicated to peace and unity in Europe for decades. Days that offer a great opportunity to put the European Higher Education Alliances in the spotlight.
After the founding of the Council of Europe on the 5th of May 1949, just six years after the end of World War II, to defend human rights, democracy and the rule of law, the Schuman Declaration on the 9th of May 1950 was the first specific plan for the creation of a European Community. Today, Robert Schuman’s visionary speech is commemorated every year on Europe Day, the 9th of May, in the spirit of peace and unity in Europe.
On this occasion the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is initiating the “European Universities Week” between the 5th and 12th of May 2022. The patron of the theme week is the Federal Minister of Education and Research at German Federal Government, Bettina Stark-Watzinger and our partner university BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg will be hosting a variety of activities related to Europe over several days.
There will also be a special Erasmus Information Day at the University of Catania on Monday, the 9th of May, where students can find out about opportunities for mobility abroad.
EUNICE European University for Customised Education is a transnational university alliance that convey the European values of multiculturalism, openness and innovation.
This year 2022, the European Day is a call for the renewal of European states’ investments in human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the face of, in words of Secretary General of the Council of Europe Marija Pejčinović Burić, “terrible violence and seismic change,” in reference to the war in Ukraine.
“The Council of Europe was founded 73 years ago, in the wake of the Second World War and on the promise of ‘never again’. For Ukraine, that promise has not held. This is not a failure of multilateralism itself, but the result of an individual country’s violent pivot away from the values that underpin it. The lesson to be drawn, yet again, is that our success as an Organisation –and as a continent– relies on our member states’ determination to do the right thing: to invest in human rights, democracy and the rule of law as the basis of a just future.”
