[caption id="attachment_31855" align="alignright" width="400"] Winners of PEP IV 2017: Mark Etzel and Miri Muntean - (c) DK Wien[/caption] Vienna Z (Miri Muntean, Mark Etzel) has won this year's PEP IV, debating the motion 'This House Supports the EU backed Western Balkans Customs Union, even at the price of terminating the free trade agreement with Russia and joining the EU sanctions on Russia' in Opening Opposition against the Opening Government St. Gallen University A (Jan-Gunther Gosselke, Katarina Kuzman), Closing Government CEC A (Kristina Georgieva, Monika Naydenova) and Closing Opposition Bard College Berlin A (John Kay, Matt Caito). Best speaker of the tournament was ...

[caption id="attachment_31439" align="alignright" width="400"] Monica Forman and Daan Welling - © Balázs Dezsényi[/caption] The team Orban Outfitters (Daan Welling & Monica Forman) won the final of the 96-team Budapest Open 2017. They were Opening Opposition on the motion "THBT it is the Moral Imperative of Liberals within Eastern Europe to stay within their Home Country, rather than Emigrate to More Progressive Countries.” Orban Outfitters beat out We know team names. We have the best team names (Olle Reberg, Jamie Batchelor) in Opening Government who replaced the advancing Melda + Jonah (Melda Eren, Johan Båge) who left due to scheduling conflicts. They also ranked above Tel Aviv Ya Habibi ...

[caption id="attachment_29710" align="alignright" width="344"] View over Warsaw - © Lennart Lokstein[/caption] The European Universities Debating Championship is over. Winner of the ESL-final is Tel Aviv A (Dan Lahav, Ayal Hayut-man) from Closing Government, thus becoming ESL-Champions, whereas the teams Tel Aviv C (Tom Manor, Noam Dahan) from Opening Government, Leiden D (Lisa Schallenberg, Simon Martina-Perez) from Opening Opposition and Leiden A (Floris Holstege, Emma Lucas) from Closing Opposition become vice ESL-Champions. The final's motion was "This house believes that western states should support breakaway regions in former Sovjet states (e.g. East Ukraine l South Ossetia) joining the Russian federation conditional on holding free and ...