European Youth Events

Once upon a time a Steal and Coal Community...

Helsinki, Vienna, Rome, Cologne, Brussels and soon Lisbon: those are some cities where the young people met in the last months. Since 2000 the European Union has enforced the community dimension of the youth policies and the youngster are invited to participate. Many documents have been approved in each youth event but, will someone take care of them?


By MARCO RICIPUTI
from Ravenna, ITALY


Young people and the European Union is still a fresh union. The wedding has been celebrated in November 2001 with the White Paper on Youth. After that, the promise of eternal love was reinforced in 2005 with the Youth Pact. Then, to boost the mutual understanding, the young couple adopted the so called "structured dialogue". They also plan the daily life in all details with a 6 years long Youth Programme. Finally, to keep the love high, they also use to have holidays often - every 6 months, with Youth events sponsored by the country that hold the presidential seat of the EU and every 18 months with the European Youth Week. I know, my readers, to many "youth" in few lines. Let's start from the beginning.

The policy framework

First of all, youth policies are still national competence in the EU. However, the necessity of a deeper cooperation of the local, regional and national dimension in this field arose soon; especially after some European programs, such as Erasmus and the European Voluntary Service that encouraged the mobility of the youngster inside the Union.

The White Paper on Youth Policy, published in the 2001, aimed to create a community dimension of the youth policies deepening the cooperation of the Member States. Then, in 2005, the European Youth Pact put under the lens the social dimension of Youth: employment, integration, mobility, education. The idea of the Council is that create better opportunities for the young people means fulfil the goals of the Lisbon process for a more competitive Europe. Not only. The Council thought also that to do that young people should participate. And the structured dialogue is the tool, a bottom down process, that allow associations of young people to be part of the youth policies flow.

Youth events

That's why we had so many youth events in the last years. The main one is the European Youth Week. We had the third edition this year, the "Youth in Action", both centralized in Brussels and locally. Furthermore, twice a year, there is the youth event organized by the Presidency of the European Union: Helsinki, Vienna, Cologne and Lisbon, the next one. Finally, in March the young people celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome with the Youth Summit, obviously in Rome.

But, who joins such events? Mainly young people selected by the National Youth Forums and the National Youth Councils. And, what do they do? Talking and approving documents. Generally the topic is given. For instance, the Youth Week 2007 was focused on social inclusion and all the youth events before the main one had the same argument. Let's have a look to the final documents of the Youth in Action! event.

No more only steal and coal

Of course it embraces a large number of topics. And probably couldn't end in a different way. The document is the final result of four days of hard work of more than 150 young people from 35 European countries. You can read the outcomes of each groups here but we can try to summarize it.

The documents underline that the EU identity can be stronger with some institutional solutions: clarify the borders of the Union and represent it with one single seat in the Security Council of the United Nation as well carry out a EU wide referendum in 2009 or enlarge the Union also to the Balkan countries.

Institutional reforms are considered the first step needed to increase the democratic participation of the EU citizens jointly to a wide accessibility to the opportunities granted by the youth programmes. Furthermore the accession of the non-EU young people to the Union: for many young workers move to the Union can be a serious and expensive problem. On this side, the European Youth Forum launched the campaign "GET VISAable" to support the right to mobility to everyone.

The last but not the least: the hot problem of the recognition. More than 100,000 projects have been implemented thanks to the Youth programme. Young people acquire more skills but they claim that the labour market is often indifferent to these new competences. And youngsters are really afraid of this.

As the Commissioner of Youth and Culture Ján Figel said, "the document remind us that the Europe is no more a community based on coal and steal". But will the Brussels high politicians take care of the requests of the young people?