Youth policy: Youth in action programme for 2007-2013
PURPOSE: to establish the "Youth in Action" Programme for the period 2007-2013.
PROPOSED ACT: Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council.
CONTENT: the Commission presents this legislative proposal since the Youth Programme comes to an end in 2006. The interim evaluation of the YOUTH programme demonstrated its popularity and showed that it has a real impact. The evaluation also included a number of recommendations to be implemented in order to take into account, in particular, changing trends in youth, the expectations created by this type of programme and requests for simplification.
The objectives of the new programme are the following:
- promoting young people's active citizenship in general and their European citizenship in particular;
- developing young people's solidarity, in particular in order to reinforce social cohesion in the European Union;
- fostering mutual understanding between peoples through young people;
- contributing to developing the quality of support systems for youth activities and the capabilities of civil society organisations in the youth field;
- promoting European cooperation in youth policy.
These objectives are consistent with the cooperation priorities in the field of youth and with recent developments in the area of citizenship.
The proposed programme has five actions:
-"Youth for Europe" is mainly geared to reinforcing the active commitment of young people by supporting exchanges, mobility and initiatives for young people and their projects for participating in democratic life.
-The "European Voluntary Service" is geared to developing young people's solidarity, active engagement and mutual understanding. It can take the form of either individual or collective projects to enable young people to express their personal commitments but also to involve them in the Union's solidarity actions. Furthermore, it also enables cooperation between voluntary civil services to be fostered.
-"Youth of the world" contributes to developing young people's mutual understanding and active engagement through an open-minded approach to the world. It opens up the programme to projects with the neighbouring countries of the enlarged Europe and to cooperation in the youth field with other third countries.
-"Youth workers and support systems" aims to develop the quality of support structures for young people. This action helps to support youth organisations active at European level, in particular the European Youth Forum. It promotes the development of exchange, training and information schemes for youth workers, projects to stimulate innovation and quality, partnerships with regional or local entities and measures to enhance and support the programme's structures.
-"Support for policy cooperation" is aimed at promoting cooperation on youth policy, supporting structured dialogue between young people and those responsible for youth policy, cooperation with international organisations and measures aimed at gaining better knowledge of youth.
The European added value is directly linked to the nature of the action. Member States would not be able to organise individually youth exchanges across Europe or wi th partner countries, multilateral exchanges, a European voluntary service, the networking of projects, European training for youth workers or support for European youth NGOs. The European added value is also demonstrated by a leverage effect with regard to national policies, by showing the way ahead (giving priority to young people with less opportunities, initiative projects, participative democracy projects, etc.) and by supporting policy cooperation (structured dialogue with young people, cooperation between the national civic services, research, etc.).
The cost of the programme for the period 2007-2013 is EUR 915 million (EUR 880.6 million for the programme activities and EUR 34.4 million for technical assistance).
For a more detailed assessment of the budgetary implications of this proposal, please refer to the financial statement.