Three members of the FEJS Executive board and three members of the FEJS Secretariat attended the Annual General Meeting of our partner organisation EJTA in Brussels. EJTA stands for European Journalism Training Association and we both agree this makes our collaboration natural. We are now also official partners, as we signed a contract agreement at the end of the meeting. We attended a one day general meeting with the topic Mind the Gap: What Journalism Education Can Do to Help Strengthen European Democracy.

The schedule was filled with guests and speakers and so we spent the whole day in The International Press Centre, based near the European Commission following these discusions:

• opening speech with Q&A by Frans Timmermans, first Vice-President of European Commission

• Wolfgang Blau, director of Digital Strategy at The Guardian on pan-European journalism – chimera or necessity

• How the EU can help journalism with:

– Wilfried Ruetten, director of European Journalism Centre
– Eric Karstens, consultant at Karstens.eu and European Journalism Centre
– Christophe Leclercq, founder of EurActiv on

• Communicating Europe to the rest of the world with:

– Gareth Harding from Clear Europe and Missouri School of Journalism
– Suzanne Lynch, a journalist at the Irish Times on

• presentations of best practices of journalism education with an European angle by:

– Jo Buelens from Erasmus Hogeschool – Erasmix
– Anne Leppajarvi from Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences
– Tuomas Muraja from the finnish Faktabaari
– Inger Munk from Hogeschool Utrecht – project Europe in the World

• panel discussion on the present and future of journalism education moderated by Deborah Wilson with guests:

– Nico Drok, President of EJTA

– Anna McKane, former EJTA President

– Marianne Peters, former EJTA President

– Romana Biljak Gerjevič, Forum for European Journalism Students

– Lukas Rapp, Forum for European Journalism Students

Get more information on the AGM and EJTA at the official EJTA site.