Susanne Zels is Co-Founder and Manager at Values Unite. She was Programme Director, Board Member, and Co-President at Polis180, a grassroots think tank for foreign and European policy in Berlin. Dr Jana Puglierin is Head of the Berlin Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) as well as Senior Policy Fellow for the ECFR since January 2020.

Susanne pitches Values Unite, an initiative that advocates for establishing a European Agency for Citizenship Education to nourish and safeguard European values such as democracy, rule of law and equality in all member states. Through increased EU investments in citizenship education, it seeks to counter political and religious extremism, disinformation campaigns and the growing polarisation of society in Europe. Susanne claims that many Europeans are willing to engage but the EU needs to provide them with the tools to enable them.

Jana shares data on the reality of practised European values. A recent poll by the ECFR, the "European Solidarity Tracker", reveals how the European Union plays an important role in the pandemic’s crisis management. Moreover, the poll shows that European solidarity is soaring which indicates a major difference between this crisis compared to the past ones. Jana urges the EU to engage more Europeans in debates on “European values”, e.g., where freedom begins or where it should be limited, to gain a broader understanding on how all Europeans feel about fundamental values.

Recommendations:

• “Cultivating a critical capacity to implement universal values nationally” by Katarzyna Twarog
• "Education in Europe" (podcast) (Listen on Spotify, Apple or Google)
• “The New Normal” report by More in Common