At the European Union’s Youth Conference in Sorø, Denmark (18-21 March 2012), European youth representatives gathered together to voice their follower’s views on European youth policies. National Youth Councils and youth organisations had asked their followers and supporters beforehand to give their opinion about this presidency’s special focus on “creativity and innovation.” Every EU presidency’s cycle, a conference is held with the aim to give recommendations of the youth to the EU Commission.
During preparation for the conference, also AEGEEans were asked to voice their ideas and opinions through an online questionnaire. The results of this consultation were compiled and contributed to the final result of the conference. Representing AEGEE were Luis Alvarado Martínez and René Janssen.
At the onset, it promised to be a clash between the youth representatives and the EU Commission. EU Commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou (Education, culture, multilingualism and youth), was present and she had a tough time explaining why her new streamlined and simplified youth programme: Erasmus For All, would cause no harm to youth organisations and the youth strategy. She claimed that the whole content of the Youth in Action programme was represented in the new one. If only the attendants of the conference and the European Youth Forum were able to gather ten differences between the old and the new programme, she would advocate to keep the Youth in Action programme. This challenge resulted in a movie with a sharp edge to it.
More movies were made and can be found on the same website as the link above. In total eight workshops resulted in 16 joint recommendations.
Most of the workshops covered the new programme and led to the same conclusion which is not to throw away all that has been accomplished so far with the Youth in Action programme and either to keep Youth in Action as a separate programme or to fully include all the contents of this programme in the new Erasmus for All. The Danish presidency proposed a compromise last month for the last option: a separate chapter in Erasmus for All with the contents of Youth in Action.
Now, why is this all important? – I can hear you thinking. Most importantly, because it involves the future of AEGEE! Almost 60% of the administrative budget of AEGEE comes from Youth in Action and the commissioner was quite adamant that the EU were no longer going to support international youth NGOs, of which AEGEE is one as well. That is why it is important that we keep raising our voice to make it heard that AEGEE is doing wonderful things and promotes active citizenship and cultural exchange among European youth! Visit also the specially created website to uphold the current Youth in Action programme.
Besides the new EU youth programme, another important issue was the topic of lowering the voting age to 16. From feedback from our consultations we had already learned that there was not that much enthusiasm for this idea and in the final result the recommendation to actually lower it was toned down to an advise to fuel this debate further.
The next EU conference is already scheduled and soon, you will be asked once again to voice your opinion on a new theme which is set out: “Social inclusion of young people with migrant background.”
Written by René Janssen, AEGEE Leuven
Photos provided by Magdalena Ole