As many of our members have realised, AEGEE is a youth organisation which gives young people the opportunity to try out their ideas, to develop their initiatives and, by these means, to become active citizens. Without a doubt, AEGEE can be proud of its singularity: we give young people the chance to try out their ideas in order to make a change in Europe. This direct link to citizens is definitely one of our main strengths. While for most Europeans, Europe is nothing more than a complicated structure and a list of far, far away institutions, AEGEEans share the opportunity to actually experience a Europe of people, to discover what this union means, to become familiar with what stays unknown to most of the Europeans. This is definitely a contribution we can be satisfied with. However, the Comité Directeur (CD) 2012-13 firmly believes that our contribution to Europe can be even bigger. We can challenge our representatives and dream of a Europe that represents us.
Lately, AEGEE is put under a lot of doubt regarding its relevance in the current European environment, and its external impact. The CD strongly believes that we can and should be taken as serious stakeholders in the European environment. Indeed, as lack of involvement of the citizens is perceived as one of Europe’s biggest weaknesses, AEGEE is actually a direct channel to bring the concerns and opinions of our members, young Europeans, to the politicians.
For this reason, AEGEE-Europe has decided to launch the position of Policy Officers.
But what is really behind this position?
The vision behind the Policy Officers is the idea that it is important for us to express our views and concerns and bring it up to the policy level. This will not only strengthen our external image and the external impact that we have, but it will also bring the Network closer to the policy and decisions taken on European level. With this project, we expect to encourage members to actually contribute and give their opinion on important issues for young people. We know that AEGEE has the potential to transform the reality, to make the opinion of young people reach the politicians, and to advocate and lobby for achieving the changes that we want.
As a start, AEGEE-Europe decided, for the sake of coherency, to launch a call for at least three Policy Officers, which would cover the three Focus Areas that AEGEE has set for the next three years in the Strategic Plan. We believe that there is enough space in each of these fields to consult and involve the Network, to transform their ideas and needs into position papers that will later be brought up in front of the relevant policy-makers.
In the near future, you will therefore very likely hear more about the following people:
fr from left to right: Policy Officer on Youth Participation:Felipe González Santos (AEGEE-Coruña); Policy Officer on Bridging Europe: Armenak Minasyants (AEGEE-Yerevan); Policy Officer on Sustainability: Mathieu Soete (AEGEE-Leuven)
And what happens with the Policy Officer on Social Inclusion? Well, we have decided to take a different approach, as we got several applications that were complementary. Under the coordination of the Projects Director, they will work together as a team and develop several aspects of human rights in Europe.
From left to right: E.G. (AEGEE-Leiden), Stephanie Müller (AEGEE-Heidelberg), Lucia Sobekova (AEGEE-Bratislava)
The Policy Officers will be in charge of informing the Network about the current issues and policies in the defined fields, as well as to create, together with the members, the position paper of AEGEE on those topics.
We hope that you are as thrilled by the initiative as we are, and that the whole Network will help AEGEE in building up our opinion and projecting it to the external world.
Written by Lucille Rieux, Secretary General of the Comité Dircteur and member of AEGEE-Toulouse