The elections for the European Parliament are right around the corner. This year’s elections promise to be different. For the first time, the citizens of the European Union can directly vote for the President of the EU parliament, while the rise of far right groups could create tensions in the EU. Under these impressions, the coordination meeting for the European Debates took place in Berlin this weekend. Right in the heart of Berlin, at the Allianz Foundation Forum next to the Brandenburg Gate, 23 young Europeans gathered to plan and discuss the series of upcoming debates. The association Bürger Europas e.V. ...

For the very first time, the University of Ljubljana Debate Society, Slovenia, will organise the Ljubljana IV from August 15th until August 17th 2014. The date, as well as the proximity to Zagreb (1,5h by car) make it a good prep tournament for Zagreb EUDC 2014. The tournament features 5 rounds with 7 minute speeches, a semi-final and a final. Chief Adjudicators (CA) will be Anna England-Kerr (semi-finalist at Manchester EUDC, winner of Zagreb Open, CA of Newcastle IV 2013) and Viktor Prlja (broke at Chennai Worlds, best ESL speaker at Manchester EUDC, CA of the Budapest Open). Reg fee will be ...

Marija Simić and Djordje Jovicevic are the winners of the Vienna IV 2014. On Sunday, the team Belgrado in Closing Government won the final round with the motion: "This House believes that no state, in any situation, has the right to demand, encourage or promote its citizens to fight or die for their country." The following teams broke into the final: OG: Warsaw A (Karolina Partyga, Maja Łukomska) OO: Vermont GW (Rebecca White, Mariel Golden) CG: Belgrado (Marija Simić, Djordje Jovicevic) CO: Vermont SS. (Jacob Senghas, Franny Solnick) The CAs of the Vienna IV Stefan Zweiker, Christine Simpson and Nicole Loiter with the winners Marija Simić ...

From the 14th to the 18th of September 2014, the Red Sea Open 2014 (RSO) will once again take place in Eilat in the south of Israel. This tournament invites debaters to combine high-level debating with a relaxing holiday trip. In the last years, participants were accommodated in an all-inclusive hotel in vicinity of the beach. Apart from that, the RSO features workshops offered by experienced debaters covering debate theory as well as various topics relevant to debating. The tournament itself will have 6 preliminary rounds, semi-finals and a final. The Chief Adjudicator will be Anat Shapira from Israel, who was CA ...

After registration has closed, the Zagreb team announced the preliminary allocation of judge and team spots for EUDC 2014. On their facebook page they wrote: "This is the preliminary list of  teams and judges allocation for institutions that have registered to participate in Zagreb EUDC 2014: http://bit.ly/1hDHmXZ The list is presented in alphabetical order for easier navigation. Institutions marked red are not eligible to compete at EUDC. Institutions marked yellow: a. it is unclear what institution (university) they have registered b. the eligibility of the registered institution needs to be confirmed When the unresolved issues have been sorted out, the institutions whose requests have been granted ...

Europe shall be subject to debate. That is the spirit that drives the International Series of European Debates. The VDCH* and the society Bürger Europas e.V. initiated this series of debates about European topics. In cooperation with different local debating societies, public debates with European politicians have already been organised in a variety of cities in Germany and Austria. This year, in the run-up to the 2014 elections to the European Parliament, the European Debates will be hosted not only in German speaking countries, but all over Europe. Christoph Krakowiak, person in charge for the European Debates, has announced that ...

The Organisation Committee of Zagreb EUDC 2014 has now announced the tab team of the tournament: It consists of Bob Nimmo, Richard Coates and Calum Wor. On the EUDC 2014 website, the members of the team are introduced as follows: "Bob Nimmo - Bob has worked on the tab teams of a huge number of competitions over the last decade, including assistant tab director of EUDC 2004, tab director of EUDC 2008, 2009 and 2012, tab director of WUDC 2009 and 2012. In addition, he has tabbed over 80 University and Schools level tournaments throughout the UK and Ireland. He has competed ...

The Debattierklub Wien (DK Wien) has opened an online nomination process for Deputy Chief Adjudicators (DCAs) for the European University Debating Championship (EUDC) 2015 in Vienna. From now on, every debater can nominate somebody he deems suitable to be part of the Chief Adjudicator team for the EUDC using this online form. However, as the Chief Adjudicators Christine Simpson and Michael Shapira emphasise, a nomination neither is necessary nor sufficient to be selected as DCA. The nomination process serves the only purpose of calling attention to apt candidates who do not apply on their own. The actual application process starts on ...

A VDCH*-team was the winner of the Manchester IV 2014: Lukas Thiel and Moritz Justen of Tilbury House Debating Society won the tournament in the category English as a Second Language (ESL). After four preliminary rounds, the team from Cologne was pitted against teams from Glasgow, Lund, and Dalarna in the position of Closing Opposition. The motion of the ESL-final was "This House would support a strict disciplinarian educational system, as long as it makes students perform better". The team from Dalarna, Sweden, consisting of Siri Nylund and Alva Winsa, also participated in and won the Novice final against teams from ...

Ruairidh Macintosh and Daan Welling from Leiden/St Andrews won the Lustrum Leiden Open 2014. The team with the name “Two Guys” beat 57 other teams from all over the world who attended the Dutch tournament. The decision was very narrow: The judging panel took very long to come to a conclusion, in the end favouring “Two Guys” in a 4-3 split decision. Ruairidh also was the best speaker after the five preliminary rounds, scoring 81.8 points on average and remarkable 89 points in the fifth round. The full team and speaker tab is available online. Martijn Otten, Lisa Schallenberg and Gigi ...

The registration for the Zagreb EUDC 2014 will start on Sunday, March 2nd at 12 o'clock CET and will be open for 24 hours. For the registration one should send a mail to zagreb.eudc.register@gmail.com. During the first phase of registration the convenors need the institution name, country, delegate representative name, contact e-mail and number of teams and judges. Every institution will be granted one team. The distribution of the 2nd and 3rd teams will be similar to the procedure at WUDC, that is to say allocation will be according to the instition's performance (number of ESL and open breaks) at the ...

From July 16th to 27th, 2014, the second Pécs Debate Summer Academy will be held at the University of Pécs in Hungary. The Academy aims at encouraging students from many different countries to engage with topics concerning a "transnational and glocal world" throughout debating. Over the course of 12 days, participants will develop and train their debating skills, practice debating and listen to lectures. At the end of the Summer Academy, a British Parliamentary Style tournament will be held. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="242"] The University of Pécs library, by C. Mike, via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] The Summer Academy also is an International Studies ...

From Friday May 16th to Saturday May 17th, the Oxford Union will once again host the annual Women's Open Debating Competition. The tournament aims at encouraging women, who are still in the minority in the global debating circuit, to participate more actively in debating. Especially after the incidents in Glasgow last year, where female debaters in a final were publicly insulted, the Oxford Women's Open also became an important event to adress misogyny and gender-related issues in the debating world. The tournament will comprise of five preliminary rounds and a break to the semi finals. Furthermore, there will be workshops and ...

[caption id="attachment_21882" align="alignright" width="379"] Jonas Huggins (l.) and Nikos Bosse (c) private[/caption] The editorial board of the Achte Minute is complete again. The publishers of the online-magazine, the Association of German Speaking University Debating Societies (VDCH) and the German Debating Society (DDG), have filled two posts: Taking effect immediately, Jonas Huggins (Berlin Debating Union e.V.) is Editor-in-chief; Assistant Editor-in-chief is Nikos Bosse (Streitkultur e.V. Tübingen). This has been announced by Florian Umscheid, President of VDCH, in a mail to all member clubs. For the first time since 2006 the editorial board now comprises of three persons. Together with Editor-in-chief Sarah Kempf, Jonas ...

Achte Minute features today an article by Tuqa Khalid on Debating in the United Arab Emirates. After Ary Ferreira da Cunha's article about the "(Hi)story of Debate in Portugal", this is the second time that an international debater reports on debating in a different country. First and foremost: What is the UAE, you might ask? Well, you probably have heard of Dubai – it has the world’s largest shopping mall, the world’s tallest tower, and recently won the 2020 Expo bid. It is one of the seven cities of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). [caption id="attachment_21844" align="alignright" width="400"] A debate at ...

From the 11th to the 13th of April the Estonian Open 2014, one of the largest tournaments in the region, will take place in the beautiful city of Tallinn. The Estonian capital has also been the battleground of the European Universities Debating Championships 2008. The tournament, hosted by Rasmus Raag and Selene Gnadenteich, will have 5 preliminary rounds with 5 minute speeches, open semis and final with 7 minute speeches each. For all novice debaters, that is to say for those who have not been debating British Parliamentary Style for over a year, there is a special novice final. (c) Ralf Roletschek via ...

On the 5th of April, the Debating Society Magdeburg launches their first English speaking novice tournament. For the organisers of the tournament, Felicia Höer and Stefan Torges, this is a large step to establish and facilitate English debating in Germany. "Here in Germany, beginners in English debating have a hard time to get a foot in the door. Most tournaments are far away and quite expensive", Stefan says. Hence, they decided to make a tournament on their own: "We have a lot of English speaking novices in our society and so we thought we could do them a favour and ...

British Parliamentary Style in the German capital: From 11th to 13th April 2011 this year’s Berlin IV will be held. Chief adjudicators (CA) are Sally Rooney (EUDC 2013 Top-Speaker and Finalist, CA Moscow Open and UKDC 2013), Tomas Beerthuis (Deputy Chief Adjudicator of Zagreb EUDC) and Kai Dittmann (WUDC 2014 ESL-Champion). Registration will open on Febuary 1st, 6:00 pm. Reg fee will be 35 € per person. As Convener Alexander Hans states, the teamcap of 40 can be expanded if demand is high. Institution cap is 3 teams. The contact information if you have any questions is alexander.hans.mail@gmail.com.  As a special, Alex ...

On the website of DKWien, host of the European Universities Debating Championships 2015, convenor Stefan Zweiker has published a contemplation of the past year. In his article "2013 Retrospect – The Starting Position for 2014", he points out what DKWien has done in the past few months to organise a successful tournament. Already in the beginning he underlines that the text was written before Chennai Worlds 2014 and therefore cannot be seen as a reaction to the problems that occured there. Achte Minute publishes extracts from Stefan's article. The entire text can be read on the website of Vienna EUDC  2015. "What ...

The Org Com of Zagreb EUDC 2014 has announced the date for the registration and the registration policy. On their website they say: "Dear European Debating Community,Registration for all institutions that wish to participate in Zagreb EUDC 2014 will open on Sunday, March the 2nd, at 12:00 CET (Central European time). That is 11:00 London/Dublin/Lisbon, 12:00Belgrade/Paris/Amsterdam/Berlin, 13:00 Athens/Ankara/Tallinn and 14:00Moscow/Doha time. Registration policy Registration will stay opened for 24 hours. Every institution will be able to register a maximum of 3 teams. We will be following the registration policy set up by Manchester EUDC and similar to one used at WUDC. All registered ...

The World Universities Debating Championship 2014 has its winners: The World Champion 2014 in the category “English as a foreign language” is Bandung A (Vicario Reinaldo and Fauzan Reza Maulana). The World Champion 2014 in the category “English as a second language” is Berlin A (Dessislava Kirova and Kai Dittmann). The World Champion 2014 is Harvard A (Josh Zoffer and Ben Sprung-Keyser). ESL Semi Final Motion: This House believes that Pope Francis should publicly encourage Catholics to support radically redistributive government policies. Break into ESL Final: Babes-Bolyai A (Radu Cotarcea, Octavian Vasile Buta) Lund A (Peer Klüßendorf, Emilia Carlqvist) Belgrade B (Helena Ivanov, Stefan Siridzanski) Berlin A (Dessislava Kirova, ...

On the 2nd of January 2014 several out-rounds of different language categories took place. Three German teams are still in the competition. Here are the result and the motions:   Open Double Octo Finals Motion: This House would abolish gated communities in the developing world. Break into Open Octo-Finals: Otago B (John Brinsley-Pirie, Patrick Dawson) Monash B (Nisha Dutta, Beatrice Paull) IIUM A (Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, Mubarrat Wassey) Stanford A (Ilya Gaidarov, Andrew Suciu) Western University A (Victoria Hale, Brent Schmidt) Yale B (Zach Bakal, Sesenu Woldemariam) UCTA A, (David Harris, James Wink) Monash C (Andrew Gaulke, Thomas Stansfield) Sydney C (Evangeline Woodforde, Daniel Farinha) Cambridge C (Frederick Powell, Michael Dunn Goekjian) Glasgow ...

The break of the World Universities Debating Championship has been announced. The following teams will compete in the out-rounds on the 2nd of January: Open Break Teams / Points, direct break to Open Octo-Finals 1 University of Sydney Union B / 26 (Eleanor Jones, Chris Bisset) 2 Cambridge Union Society A / 22 (Thomas Simpson, Ashish Kumar) 3 Monash University A / 21 (James Beavis, Gemma Buckley) 4 Harvard University A / 21 (Josh Zoffer, Ben Sprung-Keyser) 5 McGill University A / 21 (Cole Bricker, Sarah Balakrishnan) 6 University of Canterbury A / 21 (Tom O'Brien, Tim Bain) 7 University of Cape Town B / 21 (Yashodhan Nair, Daniel Corder) 8 ...

Criticism has mounted about several aspects of the organisation of the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) 2014. After problems arose regarding the accommodation of the participants during the first days of the tournament, the failure to fulfil payment of travel subsidies to independent adjudicators threatened to derail the tournament on the last day of 2013. Adjudication Strike In order to insure quality adjudication at worlds, it has become common that organizers of the competition offer travel subsidies for independent adjudicators. This year, several judges were selected as independent adjudicators and offered subsidies to cover the costs of their travel to Chennai. ...

From the 26th of December 2013 until the 4th of January 2014, the biggest and most important international tournament of the year, the World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC), takes place in Chennai, India. After participants of all over the world arrived in the Indian megacity on the 26th and 27th of December, the tournament officially began on the 28th with the Grand Opening. On the 29th, the first three preliminary rounds took place – time to present a first summary and portray some impressions. Accomodation Most of the participants are accommodated in 2- to 3-bed rooms in the five-star hotels of the ...

This letter has been written by Dessislava Kirova, Deputy Chief Adjudicator for the South Africa bid, WUDC ESL finalist and DCA of Manchester Euros. Dear Debaters of Germany, Thank you very much for the opportunity to directly address you on behalf of the South Africa WUDC 2016 Bid. We have published our extensive and detailed Bid Document for all to read and check after the aspects that are most important for them . In this brief article we would like to take the opportunity and talk about the aspects of inclusiveness and development that are at the heart of both the OrgComm and ...

On January 1st, the members of the Worlds Universities Debating Council will make many decisions – but the most important one is certainly determining the host of the worlds debating championship 2016. Two cities are bidding to host the most prestigious debating tournament in the world: Thessaloniki and Johannesburg. To make the comparison easier for the delegates, the conveners have agreed to fill out a comparative list where the core facts can be assessed and that the country delegation can form an opinion. For everyone who’s interested: Here is the link to the document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TZQYznLelA-DWSp8aTD9F3IhYaLDj4u1gTt8bLqIeLU/edit?usp=sharing Marcus Ewald/ ak

In March 2008, I sat with a few friends at the University of Porto, Faculty of Law, and we decided to create “the debate society”. That made some sense at the time since we felt like we were completely alone: there was no other debate society in Portugal, international tournaments sounded like something completely out of reach, and we didn’t know any other debaters. Many didn’t even know what debate was: professors and students were afraid we would be a façade for some political party and the idea that debate could have a place outside partisan politics sounded weird to ...

Are you ready? Because this February Leiden Debating Union is bringing you the biggest Dutch tournament since Amsterdam EUDC 2010. Leiden Debating Union was founded in 2004, so this will be their tenth year anniversary. To celebrate that with you, they bring you an English-spoken BP-tournament with five preliminary rounds, seven-minute speeches and break to semis and novice final. Registration is open. Details: Team cap: 68 teams, institutional team cap is five. Reg fee: €30 euro per speaker, judges free. (judge funding possibilities are available) N-1 will apply only for domestic institutions CA Team: CA: Leela Koenig, honorary life member of LDU, her list of speaking and judging ...

The days are getting shorter and the pleasant anticipation of Christmas is creeping in. It’s the time of the year when families reunite to celebrate and catch up on what has happened during the year. The remote brothers and sisters fly in or take the train to unite around the table, after a busy year. This is very much the context for Cork IV, the last reunion of the Irish debating circuit before the World Championship. As the Rec Sec* rightly pointed out at the final, the Irish debaters are very much like a family indeed. They share the same customs ...