The simulation is built out of the European Union’s own institutions and run under something close to their own procedure. What follows is the shape it normally takes. The exact configuration is set each year by the faculty of the member institutions, so the councils convened and the bodies in session vary from one simulation to the next.
The institutions in the room
Over its history the simulation has convened all four of the Union’s decision-making institutions, which is unusual: most European simulations run a single council or a single parliament.
- The European Commission. Staffed by students nominated by member institutions and convened weeks in advance, it prepares the working text the other bodies take up and circulates it before the simulation meets. Students have held the Commission since 1996; before that it was run by faculty.
- The Council of the European Union, in several configurations chosen for the year’s files, such as economic and financial affairs, environment, or agriculture and fisheries. Each is chaired by the minister of the country holding the rotating presidency.
- The European Council, where heads of state and government take the political questions the councils cannot settle, and which works by consensus.
- The European Parliament, where students sit by transnational party group rather than by country or by university, elect their own officers and a rapporteur, and amend the text in committee before a plenary.
Where the Parliament and the Council both have to agree, the two sides have to find a text that survives both. The mechanism for that has changed over the years, from a conciliation committee in the earlier design to trilogue sessions in the more recent one.
How students are assigned
Each institution is allotted one or more member states and sends a national delegation. Within it, students take named offices: the head of state or government for the European Council, the actual serving finance, environment or agriculture minister for a council, and members of the European Parliament. Not every member state is represented in a given year, because the consortium has fewer institutions than the Union has members, so roughly half the Union sits in any one simulation.
The assignment is to a person, not to a chair. A student researches the individual currently holding the office, including what that person has said, what their coalition will tolerate and what they cannot concede, and is expected to hold to it for three days even when it costs them the argument.
Where the legislation comes from
Topics are proposed by faculty in the autumn and settled for the following year by the summer, so that the Commission has the whole of the early autumn to prepare. The texts are drawn from the European Commission’s own legislative proposals, and they are chosen on a deliberate criterion: the file has to be contentious, and it has to be unlikely to conclude in Brussels before the simulation meets. A question that has already been answered makes for a bad three days.
Where the file is large, it is split so that different councils and different parliamentary committees take different parts of it, which is what produces the problem of a delegation having to hold one position across several rooms.
How the rooms are run
The simulation uses European procedure rather than American parliamentary procedure. Robert’s Rules are explicitly not used, and that is a deliberate choice: the point is to learn how this body works, not how a student government works.
In a council, business opens with a tour de table, each delegation making a short opening statement, before general debate under a strict speaking limit. Consensus is preferred to a vote wherever it can be reached. Where a vote is required, the thresholds are the Union’s own: a qualified majority is 55 percent of member states representing 65 percent of the population, while treaty change, enlargement, common foreign and security policy, the multiannual budget, taxation and parts of justice and home affairs require unanimity. Amending a Commission proposal against the Commission’s wishes also requires unanimity, which students usually discover at the worst possible moment.
In the Parliament, the eldest member convenes the first sitting, officers and a rapporteur are elected by show of hands after short speeches, and amendments are taken furthest from the original text first. Speakers alternate for and against, nobody may speak more than twice on an issue, and a roll call vote is mandatory if a whole party group, or a sufficient proportion of unattached members, calls for one.
The European Council works by consensus except when it is choosing presidents or appointing a Commission.
The three days
Day one is the embassies. Delegations travel to the Washington embassies of the member states they represent and are briefed by a diplomat on that country’s position on the files. Delegations make their own arrangements, which means a faculty advisor writing to an embassy’s press, cultural or public diplomacy office months ahead, and not every request is granted. The day usually closes with a working dinner.
Day two is the bodies in session. All of them sit simultaneously, so a delegation is split across the building from the opening bell. Lunch is taken by national delegation, which is the only moment in the day when a country’s own people are in a room together and is therefore when a national position is actually assembled. The evening carries a panel or a speaker and a reception.
Day three brings it to a decision, often beginning with a crisis item distributed that morning that every body has to take up before returning to its own file. The councils adopt or reject a general approach, the European Council adopts conclusions, and the simulation closes with statements from the student presidents and the presidency’s ministers.
Awards
Certificates of merit go to outstanding participants, and the students choose them. Each body selects by its own method, by secret ballot, show of hands or consensus. The rules are designed to stop the award going to the loudest or the best connected: students holding leadership positions are not eligible, nobody may nominate from their own institution, and a previous winner cannot win again. The criteria are preparation, knowledge of the issues and of the country’s position, punctuality, full participation, appropriate conduct, and staying in character.
This page describes the simulation’s normal design. Dates, locations, the year’s topics and the councils in session are set annually by the member institutions and are not published here.
