Andrea Blavia, Sofía Brom and Santiago Páez, PPE students, winners of the discussion tournament with Governance students.

Learning to defend ideas through arguments supported by evidence and working on the art of persuasion is the goal of a discussion in which every year students from Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and Governance participate. The activity is part of the subject "Rhetoric and Public Speaking", which is taught in the first year.

Based on the question "In 40 years' time, will retirees in the European system receive public pensions to cover their needs?", the 15 participating groups competed in several phases and received a specific training . Finally, the team formed by Andrea Blavia, Sofía Brom and Santiago Páez, PPE students, was proclaimed the winner. In second place was the team of Iñigo Infante, from Governance, Cristóbal Buckley, framework Mendieta , Beatriz Pérez-Calvo and Lucía Reyes, from PPE.

The activity was coordinated by professors María José Gallucci, from the School of Philosophy and Letters, and Francesc Pujol, from the School of Economics. Professor Gallucci pointed out that "all the teams were involved in the activity, showed their good work and defended their ideas with respect and in a very professional manner". She also emphasized that "it was very gratifying to see how the students improved in each phase of the tournament based on the feedback from the judges".