Lyceum No 1
named after St. Konarski
Jedrusiów 1, 39-300 Mielec Mielec, 28th March’03

Report of Spring Day Debate

1. The debate for and against Poland integration with the UE was held in Lyceum No1 in Mielec on 21st March to celebrate Spring Day in Europe.

2. The organiser of this activity was the European School Club called “Young Europeans” which has been acting in the school since October 2001.

3. The club members invited other students from our school to take part in this debate. Altogether there were about 60 students.

4. The debate was conducted by Mrs Danuta Mirońska, English teacher, who is a co-ordinator of the club.

5. The debate was the continuation of earlier discussions about advantages and disadvantages of Poland joining the UE. During the previous meeting in March, club members chose the most important criteria for integration with the UE. This covered 14 aspects: foreign policy, agriculture, education, job opportunities, economy, social welfare, consumer’s rights, environment protection, funds, adaptation of Polish law to European standards and so on. Each of 14 students was to prepare objectively pros and cons of Polish integration with the UE in this particular area.

6. The debate on 21st March started at 2.30 p.m. with welcoming all participants and explaining the rules of discussion. Each of 14 speakers had the alloted time to present arguments for and against Polish integration with the EU on the basis of the gathered information. After the first speaker had finished the presentation, all the participants began a discussion, expressing their opinions in this matter.
Later, they had to assess all the positive and negative aspects within the scale from 0 to 10. On the board there was written for example: technology - for 8 points against 2 points. This procedure was continued until all the fourteen criteria were covered.

7. The score of the debate considering all gains and losses of Poland integration with the UE in various fields was 69 to 72 points. It means that arguments against our joining the EU slightly outweighed those supporting the accession.

8. Students decided to collect all the unanswered questions and submit them to central and local Centres of European Information with a request for detailed information. The doubts arise from the fact that the Polish version of the Accession Act has not been yet presented to the public, so people don’t know exactly what the result of Copenhagen negotiations was. We should also take into account the fact that it’s the opinion of teenagers who come from the region of high unemployment, and people living here have pessimistic outlook on prospects of our country after integration.

Conclusions:

Although the results show that the Polish are not still convinced that the integration will be favourable for them, it is however important that they are not indifferent to European issues and are looking for the answers to all the doubts they have.
I personally believe that all the doubts will be dispelled soon because the pre-referendum campaign is to be launched by the government on 1st April. So, we are ahead of two months of heated debates.

Prepared by: Danuta Mirońska