Author: Estella Gambara & Iman Khodri
Create subcommittee
Milan, 08/06/2023
This Jean Monnet module on the EPPO was an initiative accredited by the Milan Bar Association and by the National Bar Council thanks to Benedetta Ubertazzi, Associate Professor of EU Law, Milano-Bicocca School of Law, and coordinator of the Jean Monnet module “The EPPO and EU Law: a step forward in integration”, who chaired all the lectures and coordinated all of the speakers.
Here we are already at the end of the second edition of this Jean Monnet module, that took place from the 27th of February to the 18th of April 2023.
This year the course has seen the participation from many high school students, as well as university students, lawyers, commercialisti, the Italian Financial Police (Guardia di finanza). We asked as per usual a feedback on the course, and we are glad to say that we received a great number of answers: here’s the data retrieved from 155 respondents.
One thing that makes this module special, as seen by the data that shows that 92,5% of the students enjoyed having the possibility of getting to attend in two different modalities, is that students who can’t attend the University don’t miss out on the lectures: this is why the attendance was off the charts with 96,1% of students enjoying the overall experience of the module.
More than half of the students enjoyed the remote version, so that they couldn’t miss out on the lectures, on the other hand 18% of students attended the entire course in presence.
The challenge of this course is the language used, which is professional legal English, and the high degree of difficulty of topics, but there is a match between students that understood more than half of the lectures (38,1%) and students that thought it was kind of difficult (38,1%) the rest, in small percentages, although found some difficulties tried their best.
The understanding of the lectures was anyway found complete and thorough by 98,1% of the students, also thanks to the materials used (i.e., power point presentations etc..), that were just right by 89% of the attendees.
The course touched on many subjects and the students were quick to find the ones that touched their interests. We would like to congratulate all of them, since they were all mentioned at least once for the particular interest of their lectures. We can confidently say that the last conference was the most enjoyed between the students (75%), since it was the last one where most of the lecturers from the courts returned and spoke again, this time in a different classroom, i.e. the conference room of the university, which was defined comfortable by the students for a 4 hour long last conference.
Moreover, during the last conference the attendees had the opportunity to experience the first VR Game on the EPPO and to learn everything about its creation and future developments. You will soon have exciting news about it, so make sure to stay updated via our blog Steppo and all the social network pages!
To sum up, the attendees rated the course a 4 out of 5 experience.
To quote some answers on the advice of the students on what to change in the next years course:
- I recommend exposing the situation of EPPO in all the member states, so we can learn the differences between Italy and the other states;
- Advice to carry out more practical cases;
- To use more Italian during the lectures;
- There have been some issues that have not been addressed very deeply, such as terrorism or illegal immigration. It would be interesting (to explore how Eppo is facing these problems) and to learn more about these issues that are affecting and have affected in the past, several European states, especially Italy;
- Yes I quite liked it. I would like to suggest to let high school students to participate more in presence. I also think that the subject of the course was quite complicated and without any basis can be very difficult to follow. So I suggest to focus more also on the high school students and on caring more for their understanding of the course and to let them participate more. In the end I liked the course, it was interesting and I learned some new things, so it was nice.
Last but not least we would like to let known how much the website was highly used and appreciated, 92% took advantage of the fact that there was a website to consult.
The layout of the website is nice, but we took some advice to make it easier to get around:
- I recommend the use of more graphics, videos and images to sustain the text in the presentation.
- On the home page, I would change where the the various topics are and remove the background image or make it more transparent so that the writing stands out.
- Yes, the layout was quite good. I recommend the use of more images or graphics about the information that the prosecutor talk about, with less text in the presentation.
- In my opinion the layout is simple and clear. I wouldn’t change anything.
Needless to say, this Jean Monnet module on the Eppo And UE law: a step forward in integration, was once again a success! We are looking forward for the next one!