III day

Morning session

The first lecture of the third working day was presented by Bogdan Živaljević. His lecture was concerning the migrant crisis in the Danube region and Serbia. He started the lecture by explaining the reasons that brought the crisis in the first place. After this, he explained what are the countries that the migrants are coming from. He spoke about the number of migrants that are currently in Serbia and that they are residing in 18 centers that were built across Serbia. He described the migrant routes and the methods how the migrants are trying to illegally pass the boarder controls and patrols. He said that a new route is emerging, the one that goes through Romania. He mentioned that the treatment of ,migrants is good in Serbia and about the problems that can occur if migrants try to pass the boarders illegally. In addition, he spoke about the asylum seeking procedure and what it means for the migrants. He also spoke about the Assisted Voluntary Return  AVR  - the financed and organized returns if the migrants to their home countries. After the lecture, he discussed these issues with the participants.

The second lecture was presented by Christina Griessler and the topic of this lecture was The migrant crisis - European perspectives and national discourses and a short overview on case studies in UK and Hungary. She presented results of a research of case studies about the crisis in European countries. When doing this research, Christina and her team used several guiding questions - when did the migrants become such a visible issue? How has the public debate evolved since 2015? Which were the most prominent actors of the debate? Is the debate European? The outcome and result of the research was that there is not a specific and universal European context and response about this issue. She spoke about the statistical data behind the migrant crisis, the number of migrants that entered the EU and the distribution of migrants in each state of the EU. She mentioned the immigration control systems and the rules that apply for the people who are entering the EU. She discussed about the attitudes of the governments and the political parties in the European Parliament.

Afternoon session

The afternoon session started with a debate about the migrant crisis and the title was - Refugees, Yes or No? And why? The participants were divided in two groups, each representing an opinion, pro and con. The debate was moderated by Paul Langer, representative of the European Danube Academy from Germany, lecturer Christina Griessler and DARec representative Marko Marković. The participants were where active and the debated was very intense and the atmosphere escalated quickly into a heated discussion. The jury decided the winner of the debate based on the arguments and the style of presentation.

After the debate, the participants had the opportunity to hear a presentation about the European Danube Academy. This presentation was held by Paul Langer, the representative of EDA. Paul presented the activities of EDA,when it was founded, for what reason, what are the goals of EDA, aims and how it functions. He spoke about the significant activities of this organization an what are their future plans regarding the Danube School Series. After the presentation, Tanja Reisser, PhD researcher and representative of EDA held a small workshop titled Classical anti-bias exercise about issues of discrimination and stereotypes in people's minds.

After the workshop, the participants had intercultural evening presentation, during which they presented their countries, showed power point or movie presentations or brought traditional food and drinks from their countries.