Summary

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES:

Three offline events have been carried out within this project:

Event 1 - Kick Off Meeting on 6th of May 2022, gathering 16 participants, project coordinators representative of the partner organizations

The event gathered 16 project managers from the following countries: 1 from France, 3 from Romania, 2 from Poland, 2 from Latvia, 2 from Spain, 2 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2 from Greece and 2 from Spain.

The partner organizations understood their responsibilities better, the calendar of the planned sessions, and contributed with feedback for the following planned activities. During the meeting, we presented the survey designed for UPEUS to gather opinions on populism and Euroscepticism from the countries participating in the project. This event also implied the setting up of the sociаl communicаtion chаnnels аnd implementation of the collаborаtive tools for the project mаnаgement. A google chat has been created to maintain a flow of communication, and specific deadlines have been established. The partner organizations got to know each other, the objectives and goals of UPEUS, and connected them to their communities' realities.

Event 2 - Online seminar of practitioners in the field of populism and human rights education - 23th to 24th of June - roundtable with experts followed by two workshops on populist narratives & their deconstruction and media literacy & critical thinking

The online seminar gathered 76 participants from the following countries: 9 from Spain, 8 from Turkey, 8 from Romania, 6 from Latvia, 5 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 5 from Albania, 4 from Morocco, 4 from Portugal, 3 from Tunisia, 3 from Poland, 3 from Georgia, 3 from Azerbaijan, 2 from Greece, 2 from Italy, 2 from Bulgaria, 2 from France and 1 from Croatia, Egypt, Denmark, Cyprus, Georgia, Macedonia and Montenegro.

The seminar represented an exchange of best prаctices in working on human rights education, exploring the role of criticаl spirit's educаtion in re-questioning the surge of fаke informаtion fаvoring populism and identifying current chаllenges relаted to Euroscepticism. The meeting was an open discussion with guests who specialized in the topic of populism and media to find out more about the current extremist realities in Europe. There are 4 sessions of video meetings, two panels with the speakers followed by two workshops. The speakers invited for the first day were Claudiu Tufis from the University of Bucharest, Ibrahim Ozturk from the European Center of Populist Studies, and Nena Mocnik from the Marie Sklodowska Curie fellowship. The speakers invited for the second day were Eli Hadzhieva from Dialogue for Europe Think Tank, Kinga Polynczuc from the University of Helsinki, Riz Hussain from Jawaab NGO, and Cornelia Lilis from EURActiv.

Event 3 - Online conference "Euroscepticism: Founded or Populist?" - 22th to 23th of September - roundtable with experts on populism, European affairs and media

The online seminar gathered 165 participants from the following countries: 68 from Romania, 13 from Poland, 13 from Turkey, 15 from Spain, 5 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 3 from Albania, 3 from Tunisia, 3 from Egypt, 5 from Greece, 5 from Italy, 4 from Bulgaria, 4 from Georgia, 2 from France, Netherlands, Sweden and Latvia and 1 from Jordan, Austria, Finland, Ukraine, Portugal, Kosovo, Armenia, Morocco, Denmark, Croatia, United Kingdom, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Germany, and Azerbaijan.

On the first day, we discussed the roots of populism, analyzing the rising Euroscepticism trends and democracy backlash in the last decade together with Anders Hellström, Malmö University, Umut Korkut, Glasgow University, and Vasileios Adamidis, Ph.D., SFHEA, Nottingham Trent University. On the second day, we focused on the media and the correlations between populism, the surge of hate speech, and Euroscepticism with Alexandre Beddock, International Journalist, Raluca Radu, University of Bucharest, and Reinier van Lanschot, co-president Volt Europa.

It was a very insightful conference in which we understood better the roots of populism, its correlation with Euroscepticism, and how to develop critical thinking concerning media channels. In the end, we presented recommendations for different stakeholders and had the chance to listen to the conclusions of one debate at Regina Maria Romanian high school from Dorohoi.

LOCAL ACTIVITIES

• Digital campaign that included a post presenting the project, 1 TeaTalk video/photo for 3 citizens, 2 posts on a populist narrative and its deconstruction, 1 post on EU democratic/civic processes in each country, one post about the European institutions, 1 post announcing the seminar and one announcing the final conference, one for the multiplying workshops and one presenting the results of the project and the policy paper. In total, 80 posts in collaboration with the partner organizations on social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

• Survey that gathered 800+ responses to asses citizens' opinion on populism and Euroscepticism

• Participantion of citizens in making recommendations for educational, civil society, media organizations as well as for policy makers. Based on these recommendations, we drafted a policy proposal to national and EU stakeholders on populism and Euroscepticism.