“Democracy is one of the aspects to reinforce relations between Europe and Indonesia,” declared Deputy Ambassador of the European Union for Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam Charles Michel Geurts at a public lecture on ‘Indonesia-European Union Connectivity’ organized by Department of International Relations of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) on Tuesday (13/11) at Building of K.H. Ibrahim of UMY.

Charles also conveyed that Indonesia is a role model of democracy in Asia due to its diversity. As one of the greatest pluralistic country, Indonesia is considered to be able to protect human rights and democratic principles which the European Union also possesses.

Besides, other factors strengthening the relations between the European Union and Indonesia are students and education. There are a lot of educational programs such as scholarships and student exchange programs. “Another essential aspect is you,” stated Charles to sophomore students of the department attending the public lecture.

Additionally, the public lecture was a part of a module of International Studies of the European Union. A lecturer of the Department of International Relations of UMY Sugito, S.IP., M.Si. told that the department has cooperated with the European Union since 2017. The department received a module, and then students had lectures on the European Union studies and public lectures whose speakers were from the European Union.

“The output is that students write a paper on the European Union, and they follow it up to be research, an undergraduate research project, or a journal article,” informed Gito. Besides Gito, there were two other lecturers teaching the module, namely Dra. Mutia Hariati Hussin, M.Sc. and Ali Muhammad, M.A., Ph.D.