Youth

Euroscola

Euroscola offers an immersive experience in the Chamber of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, allowing secondary school students to experience European parliamentary democracy. Students debate, negotiate, amend, vote and adopt resolutions on current European issues, just like the MEPs.

Euroscola combines both in-person attendance, directly in the European Parliament’s hemicycle in Strasbourg and online, via live-stream and interactive online platforms.

The programme in the morning is a hybrid event and lasts two hours.  Students learn about the European Parliament, its members,and policies. They actively participate by proposing their innovative ideas on the topic under discussion.  This is done via live video on Interactio for online students, directly in the hemycycle for students present in the European Parliament in Starsbourg or in written form via Slido for all types of attendees.

The afternoon part of the programme is reserved for in-house participants.  In order to take an active part students prepare in advance and come to Strasbourg already acquainted with the issues up for discussion.   Students take the floor in plenary and committee sessions to debate and vote on resolutions on current affairs, all the while practising their language skills and making friends with fellow students from across Europe. Teachers also have the opportunity to meet their colleagues and exchange feedback about their own classroom practices & experiences.

The selection procedure is organised by the European Parliament Liaison Offices. Both applicant and former Member States of the EU are eligible to take part.

Our Liaison Office runs a video competition for EPAS secondary school students.   To enter schools must be taking part in the European Parliament Ambassador School (EPAS) programme in Ireland. Competition winners (maximum 24 students and two teachers/minimum 10 students and one teacher) receive a subsidy towards the cost of travelling to Strasbourg.

We also run competitions in conjunction with the following organisations:

More information

For more details about Euroscola check out the website here.  For information about group composition and the financial subsidy, please refer to the FAQ.

You can follow Euroscola sessions LIVE on Parliament's multimedia centre.

If you would like to take part in a Euroscola session online, please contact Margaret at youth-epdublin@europarl.europa.eu

Our 2025 Euroscola Competition for EPAS schools: Safeguarding European Democracy

Democracy in Europe faces many challenges today:

•    foreign interference in our way of life,
•    disinformation and information manipulation preventing citizens from making informed decisions or discouraging them from voting,
•    cyber threats,
•    AI-facilitated information manipulation,

to name just a few. 

To combat this, the European Union has proposed to set up a European Democracy Shield.  

We are asking students to create a 1-minute YouTube video, in English or Irish, showing how you and your peers can play your part in safeguarding European democracy in the EU.

For example:

•    Do you fact check online information?
•    Do you take part in any EU or local democratic initiatives to be an active citizen?
•    Will you register and vote in the next European elections?
•    How can you protect European democracy online eg. not spreading disinformation

We encourage teachers to act as facilitators for their students. The main purpose of the competition is to get students thinking about European democracy, active citizenship and the benefits of EU membership for Ireland.

To help students research the topic, check out the following:

European Parliament Research Paper on the European Democracy Shield
What is the European Parliament doing about disinformation
Safeguarding fundamental rights in the digital world

The Prize
We are awarding several subsidised educational trips to Euroscola, a one-day youth parliament for secondary school students in Strasbourg.  Participants must be at least 14 years old.

Groups will comprise of a minimum of 10 students and 1 teacher up to 24 students and 2 teachers.  

Deadline for entries: 17 October 2025

Please note this competition is open to schools taking part in the European Parliament Ambassador School (EPAS) programme in Ireland only.

Competition Rules

A look back at our 2024 competition:  Digital Addiction

Our 2024 competition focussed on the topic of digital addiction. The impact of social media platforms on the health of users, especially young people, is of great concern and the European Parliament has urged the European Commission to propose new EU rules to tackle digital addiction.   We asked students to create a one-minute video clip explaining their ideas on what the EU can do to tackle digital addiction. 

Check out the winning entries below!

Dublin constituency:

Midlands-North-West constituency:

South constituency:

Honorable mentions were given to:

A look back at our 2023 competition: 'European Elections: Democracy in Action'

We asked students to create a one-minute video clip explaining what they would do to increase voter turnout and how they would encourage more young people to vote in the European elections in June 2024.

Check out the winning videos below!

Winners:

Highly commended:

Youth