From July 9th to 12th the European Youth Convention met in Brussels. 210 young delegates were supposed to discuss about the “Future of Europe” and thus advise the “senior” Convention. The delegates were either nominated by the national delgates to the Convention in cooperation with the National Youth Councils or by the delegations of the European Institutions.
I was one of the young delegates nominated by the European Parliament. But I am still rather surprised that besides me there were only three other delegates affiliated with the Young Greens. The other politicial youth organizations participated in the Youth Convention with groups with a size between 20 to 40 people. If the FYEG ever wants to influence those European level conferences in a more effictive way we need to organize ourselves better.
But anyway, in my opinion the youth convention was quite a success if you look at the bad setting and the rather positive outcome. The setting was not very constructive: We had 48 hours to draft a final statement dealing with the issues the “real” Convention talks about for about one year and therefore were forced to use parliantary working methods and were not really abel to discuss the issues; The Convention Secretariat as well as certain MdEPs (e.g. Bonde from Denmark) tried to influence the outcome with all means; Some delegates had never worked in any organization; There was confusion about the legitimacy of the youth convention etc.
But we managed somehow to reach a very far-reaching final document. It includes the call for a European Consitution with the charter of fundamental rights in chapter one. The document also calls for the radical democratization and strenghtening of the EU-Institutions as well as for a more social and sustainable Europe. The youth convention proposes the foreign and security policy to become an EU-Only competency as well as a more defined economic policy in order to control multi-nationals. You can find the final document at www.youthconvention.net .
Looking to the European future I really hope that the European Convention will draft a Constitution fulfilling the criteria developed in our statement. I also hope that there will be a future participation of the youth in this process. If this happens I would be really happy to be one out of 20 young greens participating..