And the winners are… Some tears, standing ovations and two exciting and excellent final debates – a lot of emotions at the finals of this year’s European Universities Debating Championship (EUDC or Euros). Now, really, without further ado, here are the winners from two categories, ESL (English as a Second Language) and Open (open to everybody proficient enought):

ESL Champion EUDC 2012

ESL Champion of EUDC 2012: Leiden A (The Netherlands)! That’s Menno Schellekens and Daan Welling). Congratulations! They won from Opening Government on the motion “This house would retrospectively remove all amnesties granted to those who committed crimes as part of oppressive regimes”. Runner-ups are RRIS (Israel, Ben Gladnikoff and Alon van Dam), Berlin A (Germany, Jonas Werner and Niels Schröter) and Tallinn (Estonia, Anna Karolin and Sten-Andreas Ehrlich). Congrats, really, everybody!

ESL final positions

OG: Leiden

OO: RRIS

CG: Berlin

CO: Tallinn

Watch the finals, both ESL and Open, online – Radio MOF and iDebate were streaming constantly throughout the whole tournament. Thanks, guys, for keeping those at home updated!

Champion EUDC 2012

The winner of the Open Final: BPP A (England)! That’s Jack Watson and Harish Natarajan. Congratulations! They won from Closing Government on the motion “This house would amend the US constitution to prohibit any involvement by religious organizations in the electoral process.” Runner-ups are Oxford A (England, Tom Hosking and Hasan Dindjer), UCD L&H A (Ireland, Christine Simpson and Mark Haughton) and Cambridge A (England, Joe Roussos and Ashish Kumar). Congrats, everybody – tough competition!

Their positions

OG: Oxford A

OO: UCD L&H A

CG: BPP A

CO: Cambridge A

The Council

Not only a German team in the ESL final, on top that we have another winner (may we call him that?) from Germany: Marcus Ewald, former vice president of the VDCH (Verband der Debattierclubs an Hochschulen, or association of debating societies at universities), is the newly elected president of the EUDC Council, the assembly of delegates the participating countries.Congratulations!

And another decision was made at the Council: Manchester is stage to the Euros 2013. We would have loved to present you the bid video, but unfortunately it is not available here in Germany due to some infringement. But since the author of these lines likes the logo pretty much, we assume it’s simply great. So see you all next year at Manchester Euros 2013!

Top of the tabs

ESL

1. Danique van Kopenhagen (Utrecht A)
2. Yael Bezalel (Tel Aviv B)
3. Thomas Beerthuis (Utrecht A)

Open

1. Maria English (Cambridge C)
2. Harish Natarajan (BPP A)
3. Rebecca Meredith (Cambridge C)

Emotional ceremony

It obviously was a great final day, if we believe the news on Twitter. Everybody was really touched by a video that is said to have shown the importance of free speech in a country like Serbia. Open Communications (or Otvorena Komunikacija, OK) is the society behind Belgrade Euros. Unfortunately, the video is not available until after five to seven days, as OK stated on Twitter. Witnesses confirmed on the internet how touched they were:

Video about Open communication made me cry.

See more reactions on Twitter.

Stay tuned with Achte Minute and both Facebook and Twitter for more stories on Belgrade Euros 2012.

Motions of preliminary rounds 1 to 9

1. This house believes that parents should not send their children to private school.
2. This house believes that first nations people’s (e.g. aboriginals or native americans) who live in geographically distinct areas should be given complete autonomous self government.
3. This house believes that the music industry should not facilitate the comebacks of artists who commit violent crimes.
4. This house believes that the Mexican Government should remove all limits on law enforcement and the militar in the fight against organized crime.
5. This house believes that the European Central Bank (ECB) should unconditionally buy significant amounts of government debt from struggling Eurozone countries.
6. This house would limit the amount that can be spent by corporations in any one course of litigation.
7. This house would require the military to recruit soldiers in direct proportion to the socioeconomic makeup of their country proportion to the socioeconomic makeup of their country.
8. This house believes that the Palestinians should accept complete demilitarisation in return for a guaranteed sovereign state.
9. This house would allow anyone to take up residency in any country, provided that they will not be an economic burden on that country.

Motions of the final rounds

• Open quarters: This house believes that Republika Srpska should secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• ESL quarters: This house supports life sentences without the possibility of parole for serial re-offenders.
• Open semis: This house believes that schools should aggressively stream students, according to their abilities, from a young age.
• ESL semis: This house believes that the militaries in newly democratized Arab countries should act as the guardian angels of society.
• Open final: This house would amend the US constitution to prohibit any involvement by religious organizations in the electoral process.
• ESL final: This house would retrospectively remove all amnesties granted to those who committed crimes as part of oppressive regimes.

The European Universities Debating Championship (EUDC or Euros) have been held annually since 1999. It was started in Rotterdam where 32 teams of two competed for the title. For the records: In Amsterdam, 192 teams competed for the very same title in 2010. Format has ever since been British Parliamentary Style (BPS), language of debate is English. Debaters from all over Europe and even Israeltake part in Euros and compete with each other in two categories: the open break (for native speakers) and “English as a Second Language” (ESL). Current champions are Jack Watson and Harish Natarajan (BPP London), ESL champions are Menno Schellekens and Daan (Leiden, Netherlands). This year’s Euros were staged in Belgrade, Serbia, from 5 to 11 August. Chief adjudicator was Art Ward, his deputies were Manos Moschopoulos, Isabelle Loewe, Ben Woolgar, Filip Muki Dobranic and Stephen Boyle. During the Euros, the EUDC Council sat and for instance decided about the host of next year’s championship which will be Manchester, England. New president of the EUDC Council is Marcus Ewald from Mainz, Germany, former vice-president of VDCH.