BPP, Leiden win Belgrade EUDC 2012

BPP from London and Leiden University from the Netherlands have won the Open and ESL finals of the European Universities Debating Championship 2012, organised by the Open Communication Debating Network, a member of IDEA, in Belgrade.

The BPP team, comprised of Harish Natarajan and Jack Watson, beat the teams from the Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union Society and the University College Dublin Literary & Historical Society in the Open Break final, on the motion that this House would amend UN Constitution to prohibit any involvement by religious organisations in electoral process.

Daan Welling and Menno Schellekens from Leiden won the ESL final against teams from the Berlin Debating Union, Tallinn University and the Raphael Recanati International School in Israel. The motion for that debate was that this House would retrospectively remove all amnesties garantied to those who commited crimes as part of oppressive regimes.

The two best speakers, based on their performance in the nine preliminary rounds of the competition, were Maria English from Cambridge in the Open category and Danique van Koppenhagen from Utrecht in the ESL category.

This year's European Universities Debating Championship was organised in partnership with the University of Belgrade and was sponsored by the Fund for an Open Society in Serbia, the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the City of Belgrade and the Ministry of Youth and Sport of the Republic of Serbia. Next year's EUDC is going to be hosted by the Manchester Debating Union.