The European Commission is now preparing to draft the new EU Youth Strategy which will follow the current one, ending in 2018.
The European Commission published its evaluation report on the strategy in March 2016. The European Youth Forum has drafted its position on the topic last November at its General assembly.
The general feedback is that the strategy should be more focused and less wide, and that all EU, national, local funding and policy tools should be put into place to implement it: the risk in fact is to only focus on EU level instruments, while youth policy is implemented at grassroots level, and the key role is played by youth organisations.
Based on the outcome of this consultation, the Commission has organised focus groups to discuss different aspects and EFIL took part to the one on funding opportunities linked to the EU youth strategy. In fact this time we have the unique opportunity to coordinate the new funding programme in the field of youth(post 2020 and post Erasmus+) with the actual policy strategy of the EU in the same field.
Also the EU Council is focusing on the topic and reflecting with young people on the future of Europe. On 4 April, the Maltese presidency of the EU organised a meeting in Brussels between the Youth working party (representatives of the Ministries of Youth) and youth organisations, including EFIL. The objective was to start discussion on the new EU youth strategy, in view of launching wider consultation with young people through the structured dialogue: in fact the topic of the next cycle will be related to the next EU youth strategy and what people want from Europe.
The European Commission will hopefully take into account the outcomes of the next structured dialogue process to draft its final proposal for the new EU youth strategy, which will be released at the end of spring 2018.
For more information: elisa.briga@afs.org