Advisory Council on Youth concludes its mandate with further recognition for volunteers

Latest update (22nd October): The Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers has nominated the Advisory Council on Youth 2014-2015. The European Youth Forum wishes a lot of success to the 30 new Advisory Council members during their mandate.

The Advisory Council on Youth (AC) gathered for the last meeting of their two-year mandate from the 14th through the 16th October in Strasbourg, France. During those days, the AC worked together with member states’ representatives in the Joint Council on Youth to define the Council of Europe’s youth policies, its programme for youth and the activities it implements.

The Joint Council also discussed future priorities of the EU-CoE youth partnership. Among the priorities the council believes the partnership should include unemployment and the economic crisis, access to social rights and learning mobility as well as recognition of non-formal education (NFE) and youth work.

With regard to young people’s access to rights, however, the Joint Council has yet to arrive at a consensus. As a result, the issue will remain on both the AC’s and Joint Council’s agendas for their next mandate, which will take effect in January. Further, the Joint Council politically endorsed the need to recognise volunteer time’s contribution to projects and activities and asked the European Youth Foundation (EYF) to start valorising those contributions in the grants it allocates.

The European Youth Forum (YFJ) thanks all AC members for their strong commitment throughout their mandate and efficient representation of youth in the co-management system.