We, the members of the Organising Committee, are glad to announce that the motions for Heart of Europe 2019 are ready. Matylda Klosova and Jakub Kadlec as Co-Chief Organisers have appointed the Motions Committee. This year, the Motions Committee is composed of our Chief Adjudicator Laura Krawczyk, Martin Rezny, Jaya Majumder, Joram Wijnstra, and Jakub Kadlec.
In cooperation with the Organising Committee, the Motions Committee is following a slightly different system of the tournament which has been established in 2016. At Heart of Europe 2019, we are going to have just three prepared motions instead of five. Two of them for preliminary rounds, where each team debates each side of the motion, as proposition and opposition. We believe that this is a great learning opportunity which also leads to tolerance when debating the topic from both sides. The third motion is for the grand final debate, and since our tournament is called Heart of Europe, the topic is going to relate to an issue significant for Europe in 2019.
The remaining four preliminary rounds will be on impromptu motions announced to the teams one hour before the debate begins, as well all the play-off debates (the octo-finals, quarter-finals and semi-finals). We utilize a special system for impromptus.
There will be three motions available for each impromptu debate. We will let one team pick the motion while the other one picks the side. Since there are 4 impromptu rounds
When relevant: teams have one minute to choose a motion. One minute to choose a side. One minute to agree on a motion.
The prepared motions for 2019:
- Preliminary prepared motion 1: THS leaving the International Criminal Court.
The ICC is the UN’s court for prosecuting individuals for international crimes. It has jurisdiction over 4 crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression, and war crimes. In order to be a Party to the Rome Statute (the founding Treaty of the ICC), the state has to ratify the Treaty, that’s why there are currently 123 members, while the UN has 193 states. The ICC has been faced with claims of bias from some countries who feel unfairly targeted by the ICC and see the Court as a “Western plot” against them. How can the ICC prosecute international crimes and keep its members? - Preliminary prepared motion 2: THBT big data companies should go open source.
Given the recent trend of corporations merging into a smaller number of larger companies, the growing importance of cloud computing, and the advent of artificial intelligence and internet of things, protection of personal information has already become one of the defining problems of our time. One possible solution, that may both help protect the consumer and still allow big data companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or IBM to remain competitive, is the open source philosophy. It stands for free access to and right to modify all source code by anyone, as opposed to the inaccessible source code in proprietary software. Could that possibly work?
Frand final motion: THW ban the use of a space programme for any military or covert purposes.
As per our Europe-themed Grand Final, we have chosen to have our motion reflect 2019 being the European Year of Galileo.
According to the Outer Space Treaty, recognized by all key countries with any participation in space programmes, all installations and operations on and around celestial bodies and in outer space are supposed to be peaceful, while only conventional weapons are allowed. However, this doesn’t stop the use of space for espionage, kinetic weapons with mass destruction capability, or weapons testing, which can potentially cause the Kessler syndrome, destroying all satellites and grounding all missions for a very long time. Do any security concerns justify taking such risks? Is there any need for secrecy in connection with space exploration?