There is nothing I find more exciting than the practice of democracy together with young and excited volunteers, driven by their desire to make a change in their community or society as a whole. They travel for hundreds of kilometres twice every year to meet up with their friends and colleagues during the Agora, to discuss issues that affect the organisation, and through it their lives as volunteers and members. The Agora is basically an event similar to general meetings of EU summits: insert national parliaments, add more young people and let your imagination go wild.

Attending an event like Model EU, Model UN and any kind simulation can only go so far; during the agora you get to experience democracy at first hand, with very real consequences to your decisions and actions. There are visions, strategies, candidatures and internal politics, a very thick constitution-like rule book that you never get tired of talking about, budgets and financial reports, identity issues, questions of accountability and more.

As a Europe-wide organisation with an incredibly diverse cultural group of people, AEGEE offers the perfect chance to practise democracy. It is a lovely spectacle to witness the agora: take yourself and your peers seriously, develop your critical sharpness and learn how to take some heat. An agora is indeed a world unto itself and I now find myself thinking: what would Europe look like if organisations like AEGEE governed it and young people ruled the world?