European Union Youth Policy

This article concerns aspects of the European Union's political system that may have changed as a result of the Lisbon Treaty on December 1, 2009. Please remove this notice only after you have checked that the article is up to date.

In the area of youth policy which takes over the European Union increasingly play a coordinating role. Above all, this includes the areas of participation , youth information , volunteering and knowledge about young people. Mobility, employment and non-formal learning are also key issues. The most important procedure is the open method of coordination .

history

European youth policy is a young policy field of the European Union. Legally, youth policy is a domain of the member states. In Treaty "Promoting the mobility of students and teachers" and the "encouraging the development of only under Art. 149 (2), youth exchanges , and the exchange of youth workers" is provided.

In the EU states there is a great variety of definitions, goals and scope of youth policy as well as a multitude of different institutional arrangements, constitutional anchoring and political practices. Already the demarcation of the target group according to their age varies very clearly and from country to country different fields of action for youth policy are calculated. In some countries, youth policy has its own department, in others it is a cross-cutting issue .

European harmonization tendencies only became noticeable towards the end of the 1980s, when programs to promote the education and mobility of young people were launched: in 1986 the ERASMUS program for the exchange of students at European universities was launched. The Youth for Europe program was launched in 1988 to promote youth exchanges, participation projects , youth initiatives, further training and, since 1996, the European Voluntary Service . In 1995 the SOCRATES program was created to promote European cooperation in the field of education.

European youth policy finally reached a new level with the Youth White Paper , which was announced in 1999 and published in November 2001 after extensive national and European consultations. Common guidelines and priorities were formulated under the title “New impetus for Europe's youth”.

In 2004, four European heads of state called on the EU states in a letter to the then EU Council President Jan Peter Balkenende for a “European Pact for Youth” and thus reacted to a pessimistic report on the status of the Lisbon strategy . Measures should be taken to curb youth unemployment, improve access to vocational training, recognize non-formal learning and promote the mobility of young people. In the same year, the European Council took up the proposal and integrated the pact into the renewed Lisbon strategy.

aims

The Commission's White Paper "Youth" of November 21, 2001 entitled "New impetus for Europe's youth" names four political priorities for European youth policy:

• Participation: Young people should be more involved in social events in their living environment and should participate more in the system of representative democracy.

• Information: Young people should have better access to information services and they should be involved in the creation and publication of information relevant to young people.

• Voluntary work: Voluntary work should be more strongly promoted, more accessible and expanded to new areas of application. The skills acquired in this way should be officially recognized ( see also : “ Youth in Action ”).

• Better understanding of young people: Existing knowledge about young people and youth policy should be recorded and expanded. Actors in youth policy and youth work should be networked more closely.

The European Youth Pact of the European Council of March 2005 focuses on three areas in which improvements are sought:

• Employment, integration and social advancement

• Education, training, mobility

• Work-life balance

Procedure

In June 2002, the youth ministers of the EU member states agreed in a resolution on a common framework for youth policy cooperation in Europe:

• Youth policy should be anchored as a cross-sectional policy
• The open method of coordination is to be used as a procedure.

In practice, the procedure means: the European Commission sends questionnaires on the four political priorities to the member states, evaluates them and drafts a report with proposals for common goals. These are adopted in the youth ministers' council and then implemented at national level with their own means and strategies. The member states undertake to submit regular reports on the status of implementation to the Commission, which will then use these to develop a progress report including proposals for action. During the entire process, young people, youth associations and other important actors should be questioned and involved.

See also

• Youth in Action

Web links

• Youth Policy at the European Commission
• European youth portal
• Youth Policy in Europe , the website of the German Agency for the EU program YOUTH IN ACTION

Individual evidence

1. ↑ : '' Study on the situation of youth and youth policy in Europe, European Commission, General Directorate Education and Culture, 2001, p. 58ff. '' Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ White Paper “Youth” ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ European Pact for Youth ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.