PART 1 : PROJECT LAUNCHED
- January 2025 : project preparation for Erasmus week. Theme of the event being « digital well-being », some teachers of lycée Montmajour (Arles) proposed to the Erasmus team to make it an ECI (European Citizens’ Initiative).
- 24-28th of february 2025 : high school students from 4 countries (France, Belgium, Spain, Greece) get together for an Erasmus week in Arles. It’s an opportunity to work together on the issue of digital well-being and gather our ideas for the European Citizens’ Initiative. The ideas developed by the students in advance are put to the vote (online survey) to select just 6 for creating posters.
- 26th of February, Arles: presentation by Morgane Hydrio, Master student in digital law.
She talked about the current European legal framework (DSA, DMA, GDPR, AI Act), but also the flaws in the current framework (the innovation cycles making this framework obsolete; none of this legislation focuses specifically on the well-being of minors in the context of technological advance)
Her conclusion? The current framework is too cautious to tackle the real issue, namely, the economic model for social media.
PART 2 : TEST AND PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
- 10th march : meeting with Nouri Rupert (University lecturer at Sciences Po) at Lycée Montmajour, Arles.
Our ECI project needs to be tested and improved, so students from the « Atelier Culture Générale » present the ECI project to a university professor (Sciences Po) for feedback.
He encourages us to continue, to contact politicians (Najat Vallaud-Belkacem for instance) and to lobby.
For him, the strong point of the project is that it’s apolitical, that both left and right-wing people can join.
- April 2025 : proofreading and advice.
Cyril Guyader (digital sciences specialist in the high school), Capucine Clément (expert in European law) and Morgane Hydrio (expert in digital law) gave us their advice to improve our initial project and make it more about challenging the business model of attention-driven platforms.
In the meantime, we’re conducting an online survey to determine the best name for our ICE project. « 404WellBeingNotFound » was nearly the choosen one.
- 24 april 2025 : students from the « Atelier Culture Générale » brainstorm their arguments and prepare their meeting with MEPs from the European Parliament.
- 29th of april -1st of may : trip to Brussels… 15 students from lycée Montmajour (France) and 8 students from Serres Lyceum (Greece) meet in one of the hearts of Europe : Brussels. Our goals ?
- experience a slice of European culture (have a coffee in the parliamentary district, chat with young Europeans at the youth hostel…) and of Belgian culture (eat a cornet de frites while walking around on the Grand Place, understand how Magritte’s surrealism could only have been born here, be surprised by the Art Nouveau architecture and cartoon murals on a street corner…)
- gain a better understanding of the history and challenges of European construction (visits to the House of European History, the Parliamentarium and the Hemicycle)
- get feedback from specialists on our “digital rights matter” ECI project : a lecturer from the Parliament, a eurodeputy (Nora Mebarek) and a legal trainee (Vassiliki Mitropoulou).
Short film about our mission in Brussels.
Radio podcast from Montmajour highschool.
Vlog from Montmajour highschool.
Vlog from Serres’ lyceum.
- 25th of May : we receive answer from the team of the European Initiative Forum … « The advice provided is independent and cannot be considered to reflect the opinion of the European Commission or any other European or national institution ». That was a useful help : better distinguish between matters falling under national or European law, and identify sections of existing texts that need to be amended to correspond to our ideas.
- Summer 2025 : BREAK for taking exams (baccalauréat ! ) and summer holidays. But teachers have too much holidays so they still work on the project, implementind all the legislative advise into the final text.
PART 3 : IMPLEMENTATION
- september – october 2025 : we reach all our Erasmus partners to find other schools that could be interested in joining our ECI. Our goal ? reaching 7 differents countries to be able to submit our ECI draft to the European Commission.
… we now are 6 !
BELGIUM (Dagmar Dewulf : Immaculata Instituut, De Panne)
FRANCE (Marie Desaunay : lycée polyvalent Montmajour, Arles)
GERMANY (Marion Walsh : Julius-Leber-Schule, Halstenbeker, Hamburg)
GREECE (Christina Koutidou : 4th Lyceum, Serres)
ITALIA (Monica Caterina Consoli : Ist. d’Istruzione Sup. “Lorenzo FEDERICI” – LICEO FEDERICI, Bergamo)
SPAIN (Jesús Ledo Perdigón : Centro Educativo I.E.S. Martinez Montanez, Sevilla)
- 9-10 october : Jean Monnet Cluster meeting in Brussels. Ms. Desaunay is sent on a mission to find a seventh European partner among the guests.