Perry Walker writes:

This event took place at Leuphana University in the German city of Lüneburg, which lies to the south-east of Hamburg. Teaching at the university is in a mix of German and English, so I was able to run this event in English. It was part of a conference week organised by the students. 27 students took part.

Many of the blogs here describe how the Win-Win Workout operates, so in this blog I’m going to comment mainly on the results.

First of all, nine students took on each of the characters in the table below, plus their position. Notice how contrasting the three positions are. They spent time reading about them, and deciding what that character’s aims were. Someone who had taken on the role of Kaja Kallas asked me, “The quotes from her are all about defence. Can we stretch to include the economy?” I said, “For the purposes of today’s event, you and your colleagues are Kaja Kallas. So you can play the role however you see fit.”

Character Position
Emmanuel Macron (President of France) European Independence
Kaja Kallas (head of EU foreign policy, Estonian) Atlantic Dependence
Josip Borrell (Kaja Kallas’ predecessor, Spanish) Global Interdependence

Then the students formed six mixed groups, each with one or two people representing each character. Their task was to come up with statements acceptable to each character. In the spirit of the Win-Win Workout, they were encouraged to propose statements that were aims (the Why), rather than Solutions (the What).

Then, all the statements were laid out and each student – still in character – used sticky dots to show which them they could live with. We were looking for consensus, so the overall score was the lowest level of acceptance by any of the characters, or the smallest number of dots in any square.

Below are the top three statements and the lowest scoring one. Notice the difference between the third and fourth statements. The third statement talks about “minimising reliance on the US for defence”. It is not as acceptable to people representing Kaja Kallas as the top two statements, but over half those people could live with it. By contrast, the fourth statement, “The EU has to strengthen their defence capabilities to such an extent that it is independent from other countries…” was – not surprisingly – acceptable to only one person in the role of Kaja Kallas.

TABLESSSSS

Lastly, we spent a little time on the solutions implied by these aims. There were two. First, there should be more alliances – which should go broader than treaties. For instance, trans-national alliances on military cooperation within the EU. Second, the competences of the EU should be enhanced and decision-making improved. The example given was that there should be no vetoes by a single country.

I was heartened by the warm and positive feedback at the end. The final comment was, “It reminded me that finding common ground is hard but necessary”. Amen to that.
Perry Walker