New Year is the time of new beginnings. Following this beautiful tradition, AEGEE-Europe has decided to start the year on a new track in a new house.

The old AEGEE office is well known for its bad condition. 15 different CDs, numerous Working Group meetings and endless AEGEEans from all over Europe have simply worn out the place. It is literally falling apart in some places, letting in the cold, letting go of the warmth and simply not meeting the requirements for living and working there. Besides, sharing one shower with eight or nine people is just one big joke. As the landlord is not willing to renovate it, after the decision accepted at Agora Budapest 2012, the CD was allowed to start looking for their new home away from home. They found it! It’s located at Rue de Noyer 55, 1000, Brussels. The moving date is already set – first weekend of February!

The moving plans are not set yet, but we can already give away some secrets. On the sad note, unfortunately the cute bunnies will not be moving. They will be given away to a farm where they will get to play with more of their kind. On the good note, some of the decorations will definitely be moved. The new house will have a separate room for all the stickers, so there will be no need to glue them around the post box, on doors or ceilings.

The new house is located in a very nice residential area with everything needed just minutes away, including a supermarket, a bus stop, bicycle stops,a  post office, a night shop and, of course, a kebab place. The only disappointment of some members is the absence of a pool. Quick research of the redaction has shown that there is a substantial number of houses with pools. Why the CD opted for one without will remain one of the mysteries in AEGEE history.

It is great though that the beautiful tree made by Alma Mozgovaja will also find a new home in the new house. The beautiful tradition set by the old CD will live on. As no pictures apart from the Google View are available, we’d like to present the new house to you in numbers:

– 5 minutes away from European Commission and 10-15 minutes by foot from the European Parliament;

– 4 floors and at least twice as wide as the old house;

– 9 rooms with 2 rooms given for sub-rent to AEGEEans;

– 2 big bathrooms and 3 toilets;

– 1 BIG garden;

– 100% clarity with the new landlord as to what AEGEE is and what the house will be used for;

– 1 new set of rules as to how the keep the house looking good.

Written by Olga Volovyk, AEGEE-Kyiv

Two weeks before the Agora I attended a Round Table organised by the European Youth Forum in the European Parliament, focused on the repercussion of youth unemployment for social inclusion.

The high unemployment rates among the youth is not fresh news anymore; we have heard the figures so many times they do not scare us anymore. But I was shocked when the representative of the medical students highlighted the strong link between unemployment and health. Unemployment is a risk factor for drug addiction, depression and other psychological and physical problems. This point of view adds a new human dimension to the economic aspects of the unemployment crisis in Europe, and highlights how devastating can it be for a person to feel disconnected to society for some months, to have no hope of changing its situation, and how this can lead to social exclusion.

I always knew that unemployment has a bigger impact on the collectives that are excluded from society. What I could not assess clearly before is how steadily this unemployment crisis is increasing the number of people in risk of exclusion in Europe. If the situation continues this way for a long time, we will be dangerously coming closer to the no-return point of having a lost generation in Europe. Something that did not happen since the World War II.

NEET is a complex term which was created in the UK to give a name to the people who are trapped in the situation of Not in Employment, Education or Training for a certain period of time. The term has since the 90s become widespread in the world, with even translation to local languages (in Spain they are called the Ni-Nis (NI estudian NI trabajan). This group is the one highly exposed to the risk of exclusion. These young people are in the spotlight of the European policymakers as they are aware of the risks this situation poses for the European society in the future. They are looking to address this problem with decision, and they will adapt a system which is already working in Europe (e.g. Finland) with positive results, the so-called Youth Guarantee. What does this Youth Guarantee mean?

The Youth Guarantee is a compromise to offer every young person in Europe a job, further education, or a training, four months after leaving education or becoming unemployed the latest. The idea sounds great, and if implemented Europe-wide, it may help to reduce drastically the risk of a lost generation. However, the costs of its implementation will be high (although the economical studies determine that the pay-off is assured on the long term); and I sometimes wonder where those politicians are who were capable of thinking in the long run…

You can find more information on the Youth Guarantee here and here.

A curious case: According to their definition, as a volunteer working for AEGEE for one year I am formally a NEET (I asked and they confirmed this point). Strange enough, because in spite of the term I can say with no doubt that this year I am working as hell, learning everyday and putting into practice all my skills and knowledge into my tasks. In my case, I am a NEET by choice, and the same for my fellow CD mates, we took a break of one year from our lives to become members of the Comité Directeur. However, I bring another conclusion out of the fact that I am a NEET. Volunteering can be a great help for NEETs to avoid isolation, depression, and other negative consequences of being disconnected from society. They will be active and feel useful, they will learn a lot, they will gain skills that will increase their employability. Together with the Youth Guarantee, supporting the youth organisations can provide great results in reducing the risk of exclusion of a whole generation.

Written by Miguel Gallardo Albajar, member of the Comité Directeur 2012-2013

Within 18 months the European Union citizens will be called to participate in the elections for the European Parliament. The paper ballots and the voting ceremony is perceived as the biggest expression of democracy. And yes, it does have a symbolic power and it is a very necessary part of the system of representative democracy towards which many countries have turned in the past. But democracy goes much beyond. In a true democratic culture, the citizens have the opportunity to participate in the process on a regular basis, establishing a dialogue with their representatives in parliament, in order to really have their opinion voiced there. And with elections coming closer, this dialogue really intensifies, and the citizens receive clear information about their options, so they can ask questions (and get answers) in order to have all the necessary data that will allow them to make an informed decision at the moment of voting.

We all know our current system is far from perfect. Citizens lose confidence in democratic institutions because they feel an immense gap between them and their representatives. Clear symptoms are the low participation rates in the elections, the perception of politicians as a cause of problems when they should be there to solve those problems, and the apparition of movements which question the current political system (like the Indignados in Spain, Occupy Wall Street in the USA).

Youth nowadays disregard politics, they do not consider it their business. Why should we care, when they do not care about us? This is the beginning of many problems. In AEGEE we have to think differently. If politicians do not want to listen to us, we are going to shout louder, we are going to learn how the politicians’ world works, so we can chase them and make them hear our ideas. Because if we do not, they will only listen to the vision of young people from their own political parties, who will to a large part tell them what they want to hear.

Y vote results booklet

As mentioned before, in 18 months we will celebrate elections to the European Parliament. It is the period when politicians are more approachable, as they need to convince the citizens to cast their votes. We will once again take this opportunity and shape it into a project which aims to encourage young people to vote in the EP elections. Yes, our project will do that, but why not have youth participation in a broader sense included? Why restrict ourselves to the framework of the elections? Why not take EU politicians beyond their comfort zone? The results of European Parliament elections will affect every citizen of every country in Europe for at least 5 years, therefore we should have a broad project present in all our network. The Y Vote project 2009 was a great success and we will take it as an inspiration, but we can aspire to have a more inclusive project. We have the expertise and we have the ideas, and soon we will have the right people to shape an impactful project. There is no time to lose.

The Comité Directeur has launched an open call for members interested in creating this project. You can still join this initiative by sending an email to miguel.gallardo@aegee.org with the subject “team elections” and including your name, antenna and a short description of how you see yourself participate in the project. Deadline November 4th.

If you are at the Agora, approach us any time, maybe during the AEGEE Fair. We are happy to receive feedback or ideas on this topic.

There will be a meeting of all interested people on Saturday after the closing of the last plenary, at dinner time.

Written by Miguel Gallardo Albajar, Comite Directeur & AEGEE-Alicante

On 30 May AEGEE-Groningen visited Brussels. This is something we do every year, so that the new members that we recruit can meet the Comité Directeur (CD), and become informed about the European level. Not only through AEGEE, but also through the European Parliament.

There were even some people from AEGEE-Nijmegen, AEGEE-Bruxelles and the Comité Directeur joining us. Each year, we visit the European Parliament, and it is always a big success. Last year they told us something about the European system, we got to ask questions to the assistant of a current Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and we got a tour around the plenary room.

This year we actually got a couple of minutes with a Dutch MEP, Judith Merkies,  and she told us her vision and goals. We could send in some questions beforehand, and we asked her, among other things, what her ideal Europe would look like, what it is like to be an MEP and what she thought of several recent topics. She could not answer all our questions, because she had to head out to Nijmegen, but we got the gist of it.

Afterwards, an European Parliament Official joined us to tell us more about basic tasks of the Parliament. We still don’t know what her task was though, but what she told us was interesting. She gave us some statistics and some important names of people in the European Parliament. Also she told us more about the way the European Parliament works.

Next, the assistant of Judith told us a little something about the hard life of an assistant. When the Q&A part of the visit was over, we got to see the plenary room.

The visit ended in the cafeteria, where we got to eat a fully paid lunch, which was one of the highlights for most people.

So for all of you who do not know anything about the European Parliament, the European Commission or their tasks, here is a little speed course:

First of all, the European Commission consists of 27 commissioners. There is one commissioner for each member state. The biggest task of the European Commission is to submit proposals for new laws. The European Parliament has more members though. The 748 members of the parliament are based on the number of people living in that specific country. For instance, Germany is a very big country, with a lot of inhabitants, so they have more MEPs than smaller countries. This gives them more voting rights.

But just because a country has a lot of MEPs, that does not mean they automatically create a majority. A lot of the time MEPs from the same country, do not vote the same. Just like in a country, they belong to different political groups and have different opinions, even within a country.

The European Parliament is responsible for creating new laws, but because there needs to be a majority, this can take a very long time. Before a law is ready to be voted on, it gets adjusted a lot of times, so that most of the MEPs agree with the outcome and vote in favour.

There is a treaty stating that the 12 plenary meetings have to be in Strasbourg. So every month all the MEPs travel to this city to have a meeting. They stay there for a week, they discuss various topics and vote on them.

Because people are chosen for the European Parliament by capacities and not language skills, everything has to be in the native language of the MEP. Therefore, there are a lot of translators involved in these plenary sessions.

There are a lot more interesting things to say about the European Parliament and Commission, but considering this is the speed course, I think this is enough for now. Of course Google also knows a lot!

Written by Sanne Hillemans, AEGEE-Groningen