Lucas Berard
2025–26 US student, Fulbright-Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Award

Dune Johnson
Communictions manager

In February 2026, we had the honor of attending the Fulbright EU-NATO Seminar in Luxembourg and Brussels, an annual event organized by the Fulbright commission in Brussels. This unique seminar brings together Fulbright recipients living in EU-NATO nations, offering a rare opportunity to connect with Fulbrighters beyond one’s host country and to learn more about the European Union and its governing bodies as well as about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the defense alliance that has helped make all member states safer since its founding in 1949.

During her speech, Ambassador Feinberg spoke about the Fulbright Program as a valuable investment in international exchange, a sentiment that echoed throughout each conversation we were part of over the course of the evening. Hearing the experiences of Fulbrighters from across Europe further reinforced the program’s broad impact, and Lucas also took a pause from the thought-provoking conversations for a more playful moment, seizing an opportunity to pretend to deliver a speech from the podium.

On the third day, we visited the European Commission and the European Parliament in Brussels. At the European Commission, three speakers talked to us about how the commission works, the role it plays relative to other EU institutions, and the projects it’s currently working on. As Americans living in the EU, Dune and Lucas both gained useful insights that improved their understanding of the EU’s inner workings, underscoring how the EU-NATO Seminar contributes to the Fulbright mission beyond each participant’s understanding of their respective European host country. 

One interesting thing Lucas learned at the European Parliament was that there were minimum and maximum numbers of seats that could be held by an individual country. Out of the Parliament’s 720 seats, smaller countries such as Luxembourg receive six seats regardless of their population. Germany, by contrast, holds 96 seats, which is disproportionally smaller relative to its population. This arrangement reminded Lucas of the structure of the US Congress, where less populated states receive slightly greater representation.

The final day of the seminar began with a visit to NATO headquarters. The new headquarters building is designed to resemble two hands coming together, symbolizing the partnership between member nations. On our way there, we also passed the former NATO headquarters a few blocks away. Today, the building serves as the courthouse where suspects connected to the 2016 Brussels bombings are being prosecuted. In the new headquarters, Dune was impressed by the proximity of the missions; whereas diplomatic missions traditionally are not housed together, requiring ambassadors and their staff to travel to and from their counterparts’ missions to engage with one another, the NATO headquarters facilitated more frequent and perhaps deeper exchanges since all 32 NATO member states have missions and ambassadors on site. What’s more, interactions weren’t limited to formal meetings; every member of every delegation had opportunities to meet informally at the café, the restaurant, or at any of the other facilities contained within the building. For Dune, the NATO model represented an ideal setup for diplomatic relations and mutual understanding.