The workshop has been attended not only by the programme’s current students, but also by EUCAIS alumni students, who benefitted from the workshop’s lectures and contributed to the networking among the present and alumni students and experts.
During the workshop, students had to take the second semester’s written exams and attended the introduction to the third semester’s courses. In the third and last semester of the EUCAIS programme, students will learn the basics of European and international law and choose one optional course in either world politics, resource and energy policy of the EU, or comparative regionalism. In addition, the students start writing their master theses that will be finalized and defended at the beginning of 2015.
Besides these mandatory components of the master programme’s workshop, students benefitted from the opportunity to take part in an international conference on the “Prospects of EU - Central Asia Relations” that took place in the same venue on 28 – 29 August 2014. This conference has been organized in the framework of the EUCAIS master programme, that is organized by the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP) and the Centre international de Formation européenne (CIFE) with support of the Volkswagen Foundation and funding by the Jean-Monnet-Programme of the European Union. The conference was an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge for representants from academic, political and societal institutions of both regions. Additional to plenary sessions on regional cooperation, natural resources and security challenges within Central Asia as well as on the prospects of both regions’ potential of cooperation, participants presented and intensively discussed papers in four working groups: comparative regionalism, security challenges, democracy promotion and developments in research and teaching in Central Asia.
Apart from the workshop and conference programme, students, alumni and conference participants discovered Almaty and its surroundings, as for most participants the visit in Kazakhstan was a premiere. Insofar, the event also contributed to the cooperation and understanding in between Central Asian countries.
