Remember those questions about the Structured Dialogue of the EU, which were sent by our Liason Officer towards European Youth Forum?
This is what it is all about!
Structured Dialogue for DUMMIES:
- Who? Young people and policy makers.
- What? A space for young people and policy makers to discuss and feed into European youth policy at national and European level together. A tool to ensure that youth policy meets the needs and expectations of young people across Europe.
- Why? To recognise all young people as a valuable asset to society. To uphold the right of young people to participate in the development of policies which affect them. To serve as a forum for the continuous, joint reflection on the priorities implementation and follow-up of European cooperation in the youth field.
- Objective: To involve a diverse range of young people and youth organisations in working together with policy makers for the purpose of joint policy making.
We are currently in the second cycle of the Structured Dialogue of the Trio EU Presidencies.
As you might remember, the first Trio of EU Presidencies were in Spain, Belgium and Hungary.
The second Trio comprise of Poland, Denmark and Cyrpus. Each presidency is known as a phase, so now with the Danish presidency we are in the second phase of the second cycle. The whole trio covers a topic and each of the presidencies in the trio covers a sub topic too.
Each presidency lasts 6 months and ends with a EU Youth Conference where National Youth Delegates, Policy Makers from Member States, the European Youth Forum and the European Commission meet to draft a final document, which will be the recommendation that the current presidency will send to National Governments and to the European Commission.
The last Youth Conference took place in Soro, Denmark. At this Conference, I had the opportunity to go as National Youth Representative for Spain, as I am involved in the Spanish Youth Council.
The overall topic for the second phase of the Structured Dialogue is “Participation of Young People in Democratic Processes”, and the sub topic of the Danish presidency is youth participation.
For a weekend, as a member of the Spanish Delegation (composed by three Youth Delegates and three politicians) joined the other EU 27 Delegations and drafted recommendations to the Member States and the Commissions on each of the following topics:
1) Youth Participation – Elections
2) Youth Participation – Lowering Voting Age
3) Motivation for Participation
4) The New Programme on the Education and Youth Field
5) Support Mechanism and Participation
6) Media and Participation
7) Participation and Innovation
After a very intense weekend we developed a document which you can find here.
It was an amazing experience to be a part of this project drafting the recommendations on behalf of the Youth of Europe. Our true voice.
We also counted on other AEGEE members like Kay Lieker and René Janssen who also participated in the conference and gave their AEGEE input too!
It’s very important for AEGEE members to get involved in these kinds of policy making processes, either by joining our National Youth Councils and participation platforms in our countries, or at the same time by lobbying to get International Youth NGOs like AEGEE directly involved through further participation of our members in the EU Youth Conferences.
The outcomes of these conferences represent what the young people in Europe want.
They are also very enriching for our members so do not hesitate to try it out!
The next one will take place in Cyprus so stay tuned!
Want to be involved? Go to the European Youth Portal and search for your National Working Group and get in touch with them!
You can find all the information in the European Youth Portal page:
http://europa.eu/youth/index.cfm?l_id=en
Written by Luis Alvarado Martinez, Spanish National Youth Delegate & AEGEE- Las Palmas