Hongaarse kinderen tekenen hun toekomstvisie voor Europa (en)

Eniko Gyori Minister of State for EU Affairs, gave the Dutch Ambassador Robert Milders a time capsule containing children’s drawings, in Budapest on 29 July 2011. The drawings were selected from a competition that was organised during the Hungarian Presidency.

The children’s drawings were depicting their expectations on the European Union’s politicians for the upcoming years. We hope that on opening the time capsule in five years, the Dutch will see many of these desires fulfilled, stressed Ms Gyori.

The organisers chose fifty of the children’s drawings that were submitted into the competition called “My message to Europe” and locked them in a time capsule. After the last joint press conference that was held by the Ministers of State of the Spanish-Belgian-Hungarian Presidency Trio in Budapest, Ms Gyori delivered the sealed steel drum to the Dutch Ambassador Robert Milders. It should be opened in 2016 five years from now, by the representatives of the Netherlands, which by then will be holding the EU Presidency.

“I am very glad that the Hungarian children have sent messages about their expectations of politicians,” Eniko Gyori said. She explained that more than a hundred of the drawings were submitted from 1,700 schools. The pictures can be viewed on the Presidency’s official website, and lots of messages were on display at Presidency events, including the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, which houses the Council. Some of the drawings were presented as gifts to high-ranking delegation members who were visiting Hungary during the Presidency. The Minister of State expressed her extreme satisfaction with the drawings, among which she also has her personal favourites. “By the drawings, the children were able to express very well what they had to say,” she stated.

Ms Gyori said she hoped the desires and requests expressed in the drawings would come true in the upcoming years, “We hope that in five years, when the Dutch open the capsule and see the drawings, the things shown by them will have come true. If not, the politicians will see what else they should be doing to make the children satisfied,” Ms Gyori said during her closing speech.

Background

In November 2010, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Office of the Minister of State for Education of the Ministry of National Resources, announced a competition that requested for Hungary’s primary school principals and teachers to encourage their children to prepare drawings or short texts as messages about Europe. In these 18x13 cm drawings, made by pencil, crayon or felt-tip pen, and in the short messages composed in foreign languages, the children were supposed to express the way they expected EU experts and politicians to make of Europe. The competition was extended in January, which finally received thousands of enteries.