"A European walk around Brussels" , testimony of Juan Ignacio de la Torre Sainz

Before being part of the ESCP community, I could not imagine that I was going to visit the European Parliament and learn a lot about the European Union. Even, a group of us went not only once, but twice.

In October, we had the opportunity to participate in the Start@Europe for 2 days. This was a huge opportunity to meet European experts, students from all campuses of the ESCP and to have a deeper vision of how decisions and laws are taken. Do you know how difficult is creating a European law? As students very motivated who want to make Europe a better and more sustainable place to live, we found many difficulties and disagreements to go far with several proposals… so surely, politicians must deal with it everyday and it is not an easy work.

Since it was a unique opportunity where we learnt and had great time at the European Parliament, we can certainly say that the event is going to be in our memories for a long time. The staff strove a lot to give us an extraordinary experience and they succeeded on doing it. Examples like experts´ testimonials, discussions about several proposals with their respective voting processes, till sharing experiences and interesting conversations at lunch and dinner made it incredible. In my personal case, I also had the chance to talk in front of everyone to defend the animal´s security among European countries. I found it one of the most special and emotional moments of my life because being able to fight for the animal’s rights in front of 800 people does not happen every day.

Secondly, we received an email from the Staff some weeks after, because a group of us was invited to participate in the European Youth Parliament. Every opportunity to claim what the younger generations believe, is completely necessary. Meeting with more than 800 European students and matching ideas and thoughts, gave us hope and a different vision of the future. A change must be done in terms of education, pollution´s laws, plastic waste and consumption.

Without a doubt, we got a positive feeling at the end of the day, however we do not have to forget that the European elections are taking place 26th May. The change will come if people, politicians and companies can work together to create a better future, following the same path.

To conclude with, I want to thank ESCP for all the amazing opportunities that are letting us grow professionally and personally, all the staff and people who organized the event, all my colleagues who went along with us during the experience and groupworks, and all the ESCP community and European students who made these experiences as ones of the best of my life.”

Juan Ignacio de la Torre Sainz, MIM students, ESCP