Part 1: What is EEO?
The European Economics Olympiad (EEO) is one of the largest economics competition in Europe for high school students. The competition was established in 2016 by the Institute of Economic Education (INEV) – a non-profit organization in Czech Republic. Throughout the years, it has become the biggest economics and finance competition in Czech Republic and Slovakia and expanded to other European countries with over 20,000 students and more than 550 schools taking part each year. The EEO aims to fill the gap in teaching economics and finance at high schools, and strengthen the skills of adolescents in logical thinking, problem-solving and critical thinking, spark thein interest and support them on their career path.
Part 2: The sections of EEO
The competition encompasses five sections which respectively are the Economic MCQ Challenge, the Economic Quiz, the Economic Presentation, the Model European Union, and the International Trade Simulator.
The first two sections of the competition, the economic quiz and MCQ are two sections that aim to warm all team members up by testing their economic knowledge.
The Economic Presentation is an individual section where each member in the team will prepare a 5-minute talk to an examiner to exhibit his or her economic aptitude.
In the fourth component of the competition, namely, the International Trade Simulator, all team members will be in the position of a country’s economic finaliser. They will demonstrate their ability to contrive the most prosperity to their country with available domestic goods through international trade.
The final and most enchanting part of the competition is the Model EU. In this part, the team members will be the delegates of a country and try to solve intricate and intractable economic problems. Getting the support of other delegations is crucial in this part.
Part3: The awards
We achieved National first place in the Quiz Bowl competition, winning the Intelligence Excellence Award.
We achieved National first place in the Model European Union competition, winning Best Delegate Team.
We achieved National first place in the EU trade war competition, winning the Hermes Award.
We achieved National first place overall, winning the Gold Award.
Part 4: Speech from qualified team members
Xitong(Cynthia) Liu:
This is the first time for me to participate in EEO competition, which contains more diversified competition section than NEC and IEO. It does not only assessed our economics knowledge , but also trains our ability to make decisions, fluent oral speeches and quickly adapt to changes. I am very happy and honored to build a team up with three A1 seniors. As the team leader, I analyzed this year’s Model European Union topics one by one with my teammates before the competition , and assigned the tasks that each of us needed to do researches, so as to ensure that we could choose the most suitable topic to represent our country,other competition sections, such as Trade war, Economics Quiz Bowl, we are in WeChat voice chat for most all day, updating our own information to each other, we ranked in the first place among all participants, successfully got the only gold medal honors in China, being admitted to EEO Global Challenge!
Zanzao(Jackson) Chen:
For me, the most memorable part of this competition is the international trade war. In this section, each country has a fixed number of resources and can trade these resources with other countries. When the rules were explained to us, the recommended strategy was to diversify our country’s portfolio. However, when our group looked into the scoring criteria, we found that the opposite was true: if we spent all of our money on only one type of commodity, the final score would be higher instead. By using the competition’s broken system to our advantage, we were able to achieve first place.
Runlin (Lee)Li:
I think the most attractive section of the competition is the Model EU. We were asked to make a poster and brief introduction for the country that we represented. I learned abundant new knowledge regarding Luxembourg while looking for some inspiration for the poster. Through constant and appreciable interaction with other team members, I integrated some of the most iconic elements of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg into the poster design and produced an outcome that our team is very satisfied with. The later part where we discussed the vaccination policies of the country also provided us with a precious chance to learn the politics and culture of this country. The activities were substantial and interesting in general.
Wenting(Wendy) Yang:
Unlike the other kinds of economics competitions, the European Economics Olympiad (EEO) involves sections called “Model EU” and “International trade war“which would bring an enriching experience to participants. In terms of preparation, it highly suggested that students should find their team members as soon as possible. This is mainly because three sessions of the competition require team work and the tacit understanding between teammates is the key of winning these sessions. It also suggested that students should form teams with those who are interested in economics and/or business so that the efficiency of preparation would be higher.
Congratulations to the above students for their excellent results. We hope there will be more excellent students who dare to challenge themselves and strive for the first place in the future!
- Article / Cynthia Liu
- Pictures / Cynthia Liu
