Thousands of political debates: Dialogue format Europe Talks 2024 matches Europeans with different opinions for weekly conversations
Starting today, ZEIT ONLINE, together with media partners from eleven countries, is calling for a new edition of Europe Talks. The campaign invites people from all over Europe to engage in cross-border debates on controversial political topics. An algorithm will match participants with a conversation partner from another European country who holds different political views.
The 2024 edition of Europe Talks takes place in the weeks preceding the European Parliament elections. Participants may choose to be matched with a discussion partner for eight rounds of dialogue in April and May. The discussion topics include security and defense, migration, climate change, disinformation, and the role of EU institutions. The one-to-one conversations, conducted in English, take place mainly via video call.
Those interested can register at www.europetalks.org
ZEIT ONLINE organizes Europe Talks with the cooperation of a network of European media: Daily Mirror from Great Britain, Der Standard from Austria, Efimerida Ton Syntakton from Greece, Euractiv from Belgium, Gazeta Wyborcza from Poland, Il Fatto Quotidiano.it from Italy, LRT from Lithuania, N1 from Serbia, PressOne from Romania, SME from Slovakia, The Display media platform and its partners, Eurozine from Austria, Krytyka Polityczna from Poland, El Diario from Spain, and Voxeurop from Belgium.
Europe Talks 2024 is co-funded by the European Commission Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) program, as well as the EU Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology initiative to create new European media platforms.
This is the fourth edition of the cross-border project Europe Talks, which started in 2019. The idea is based on a ZEIT ONLINE project that originated in 2017: Germany Talks, a format that brings people together from different political views for a private discussion. In 2018, this idea gave rise to the international platform My Country Talks, which has facilitated dialogue programs in cooperation with media partners in 41 countries. More than 290,000 people around the world have now registered via the platform to participate in a political one-on-one conversation. In 2023, ZEIT ONLINE organized The World Talks, a global dialogue program which reached participants in more than 100 countries.
Europe Talks and My Country Talks have been awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Integration and the President’s Award of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), among others.
