Parliament assesses the EU Youth Strategy

Yesterday, in a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), MEPs adopted a report on the Assessment of the EU Youth Strategy 2013-2015.

The European Youth Forum welcomes this report, which stresses the importance of the Structured Dialogue as a tool for youth participation and the crucial role of youth organisations in policy making in view of the next Youth Strategy from 2019 onwards. The Youth Forum would like to thank the rapporteur and shadow rapporteurs, as well as the Youth Intergroup, for their committed work.

The report crucially calls for investment in young people and youth policies, as well as more coherence between the various EU strategies and programmes in order to achieve a truly cross-sectoral mainstreamed European youth policy. It also asks for benchmarks to increase incentives for Member States to improve their national youth policies and implement the Youth Strategy

The Youth Forum was pleased to see that the committee recognises that there must be better validation of skills acquired though informal and non-formal learning. And that it points out the big role that youth organisations play in the development of young people’s skills and personal development. Moreover, it points out that young people’s voluntary activities should be supported and better recognised. Finally, there should be better access for young people to mobility schemes and information on EU programmes.

On the same day, the CULT Committee also had an exchange of views on Erasmus+ Implementation, in order to prepare for the European Parliament’s Erasmus+ Implementation Report. Two studies on the implementation of the Erasmus+ Programme were presented.

The Youth Forum is looking forward to the upcoming report and highlights the importance of Erasmus+ in providing young people with the necessary skills and competences to face new challenges. The youth sector has proved itself to be extremely responsive to the changes introduced by the new programme. Using only 10% of the budget it manages to mobilise one quarter of all of the exchanges taking place under the programme. But in order to continue to do this it is vital that the programme is invested in, especially during its 30th anniversary year coming up in 2017.

The Erasmus+ implementation studies are here and here.