To enable the young population of Switzerland and of other European countries to actively engage with the questions «Where is Switzerland heading? And where is Europe as a whole heading?», the first «European Future Leaders Conference» took place from 11th to 13th November 2016 in Zurich. It was part of the series of events «Churchill in Zurich». 28 young women and 28 young men from Switzerland and 35 other European countries came together to discuss the following lead question: «What is the social, economic and political Europe we want to live in by 2030 and how will we create it?»
The «European Future Leaders Conference» was being realised on the basis of a Syntegration, a procedure particularly suitable for workshops involving a larger number of participants. Syntegration allowed the participants to develop concrete solution proposals on a consensual basis. The Malik Institut from St.Gallen, the leading specialist for Syntegration, led through the conference.
The Erasmus Student Network, the MUN Team UZH and Young European Swiss are three student organisations of the University of Zurich. They were responsible for the recruitment of the international field of participants and they supported the conducting of the conference.
As a first step and with the lead question «How do we envision the Europe of tomorrow?» in mind, the participants of the conference defined 16 essential thematic fields they wanted to deal with. Afterwards, they discussed the 16 topics in smaller groups of changing constitution. At the end, 16 postulates were presented to the plenum.
The Syntegration lasted for two days. The outcome was recorded in a final report.
