"After the course, I joined the staff and started sharing my ideas. A year later, I had the privilege to be nominated Director. For me AESI is simply a platform. We are all volunteers, and everyone gets a chance to express themselves present new ideas, launch new projects, and even develop liaisons and connections. "

"Most undergraduates, particularly in Italy, don't fully comprehend the nature of political institutions, both national and international."

"For over ten years we have organised workshops and seminars abroad. We started in the Baltic region in the early 1990s, went to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine. Being an educational organisation, we always tried to interact with civil society and, most importantly, with universities. "

"Hopefully, we will still be effective in promoting academic cooperation and cultural initiatives in Europe. The recent European Youth Forum organised in Rome under the patronage of the Presidency of the European Parliament is the best proof that commitment and a great, enthusiastic staff can help you achieve incredible results, even with a relatively limited budget. We hosted the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, who seemed very much impressed by our initiatives and invited the university students we had gathered, representing all EU countries, to continue helping AESI promote greater understanding of the EU integration process. "

"While the staff remains exclusively composed of young and committed people with great ideas, our academic board has also grown through the years and includes people with significant experience in the fields of academic cooperation and diplomacy in crisis areas. I believe that with this kind of synergy we will be able to continue to expand our network and activities."

"Each time we succeed in truly broadening the perspectives of our students, then we have accomplished a great success."

"Working in Israel and Palestine has been an amazing experience."

"My main experience there was not related to AESI, even though AESI actually held a winter-school in Jerusalem a couple of years ago. I was cooperation officer for a UNESCO-University of Rome "La Sapienza" joint initiative. You use the term "polarising", which is more than appropriate, of course, but let me tell you that once our confidence-building efforts started to work I witnessed among our Israeli and Palestinian friends an incredible, unique will to change things and work for a peaceful future in a spirit of sincere respect and mutual understanding."

"The most encouraging thing has been to feel such a commitment among young students and academics. This has changed my life. I remember the first night I went out with a group of 40 Israeli and Palestinian students in East Jerusalem. They had been gathered for a 4-day introductory workshop to a lengthier project that I was working on. It was only on the second night that we had an opportunity to go out as a group and walked into a shisha bar and everybody around looked at us as if we were aliens. However, in all our smiles, you could see that we all never felt more normal."

"Indeed, I think that the civil society component is often overlooked. This is due to a very simple reason. Please do not take me as a staunch anti-interventionist, as I am very far from that. However, recent history, particularly the situation in Bosnia, shows that once a crisis is under control and reconstruction can be launched, the continued involvement by the International Community is fed by two things: the occurrence of small crises that can be easily contained and, equally important, periodic and partial successes. The former allow a mission to be kept in place and be justified in the eyes of the host country and its population, the latter allow a mission to be justified in the eyes of the domestic constituencies of the countries that contribute to it by sending soldiers, personnel and funding. Having said that, I think that a bit more of courage and will by the International Community to structure its presence on a given crisis on the basis of clearer long-term objectives and better designed bottom-up policies could change the outcomes drastically. "

"Personally, I am convinced that the EU has the instruments, the history and the potentials to implement a similar effort in its neighbourhood. In the last years we have been a bit hesitant, and we relied too much on the indirect stabilizing projection of our perspective of membership - evidently I am thinking of the Western Balkans. However, with better coordination between the Commission and the Council, EU missions abroad could become an example also for initiatives of the UN or other regional organisations in troubled areas. The key should be a more coordinated and effective promotion of reconciliation policies, development and security."

"The challenges are many and the instruments are not clear, not to talk about the degree of support that should come from other EU partners. Sarkozy referred to the project by mentioning the spirit of the 1957 Treaties of Rome. I do not see all these connections as he did, but I will be happy to be corrected, especially if the forum, institutions and structures that are going to be built to implement this initiative will make the Mediterranean safer and more prosperous for both sides of the region. As I have said, success will depend on many variables, including the capacity of the northern part to stimulate cooperation among some neighbouring countries of the southern regions -both in the Maghreb - I am thinking of Morocco and Tunisia - as well as, evidently, on the south-eastern shores… Their tumultuous bilateral relations have serious negative effects on the wider surrounding regional scenarios."

"I think that we, the EU countries have been so far the biggest challenge to ourselves. The idea of seriously re-structuring the Union in view of the enlargement dates back to the early 1990s. Unfortunately, no big change has taken place so far. It seems clear to me that, especially with the stagnation of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU's current absorption capacity is going to reach its apex with the probable next enlargement to Croatia."

"We actually just closed the academic year with two successful events. In June, we had the AESI European University Summer School in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we gathered 25 students from most Italian universities - and some from other European countries. The group was hosted by the peace forces. We are particularly thankful to the Italian Carabinieri from Eurogendfor, the European Gendarmerie Force, and the contingent of the Italian Army contributing to EUFOR. We were able to interact with students from Bosnian universities, including both the Universities of Sarajevo and East Sarajevo, the Croat-Catholic and the Muslim universities in Mostar, and the University of Banja Luka in Republika Srpska."

"Then, only a few days ago, we had a marvellous ceremony at the Italian Diplomatic Institute. The students enrolled in the 2007/2008 class received their diplomas in the presence of academic board, the Director of the Diplomatic Institute, and representatives of the European Institutions in Rome. Moreover, we chose the best papers and thus gave the opportunity to a selected number of students to give a presentation and discuss their policy proposals and analyses with all these members of the international and Italian diplomatic community. "