St Aloysius' College team wins Mini Euro Assembly

A team of students from St Aloysius' College, Birkirkara, representing Georgia, won the 20th edition of the National Students Travel Foundation (NSTF) Mini European Assembly whose final session was held at Parliament on May 8.

Second place went to the team from the Sir Mikiel Anġ Refalo post-secondary complex, Victoria, which represented Croatia, while the University of Malta team representing Iceland took third place.

In June, these teams will take part in the prize tour to Brussels and Strasbourg where they will visit major European institutions and meet key personalities including European Commission vice-president and Commissioner responsible for Transport Antonio Tajani, who was the keynote speaker for this session.

Maria Grima was declared Best Speaker, while the Best Effort Award was presented to Abigail Cremona.

Ten of the best speakers at the assembly were also nominated as ambassadors to represent Malta at the Model European Parliament Session in Bonn in November. The 10 in order of merit are Hilary Briffa, Victoria Decelis, Lisa Azzopardi, Salvino Ellul Bonici, Yanika Sant, Lynette Camilleri, Vanessa Gatt, Christabel Borg, Abigail Attard and Douglas Aquilina.

Present at the final session and the award ceremony were Education Minister Dolores Christina, Public Dialogue and Information Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said, Chief Justice Emeritus Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici, and NSTF secretary general Francis Stivala, among others.

During the assembly's final session, the St Aloysius' College team presented a report on the session's theme 'The European Transport Policy: Building Bridges or Flying Solo?' and a team from the University representing Malta submitting the resolution.

All participating teams made interventions and discussed a number of amendments to the resolution, which were either accepted or voted upon, and the amended resolution was unanimously approved by the 13 delegations present.

Interestingly, the teams representing Malta and Italy during the session seemed to have been influenced by the diplomatic spat that was taking place between the two countries at the time, and the Speaker of the House Louis Galea, as chairman of the plenary session, had to intervene to avoid further animosity between the two teams.