Individual Members

You can be a LYMEC Individual Member!

In some European countries there are no liberal youth organisations that could provide young liberally minded people the access to LYMEC. Also, some European idealists would like to work directly on the level of European politics even if they are already members of their national liberal youth organisations.

To those people, the Individual Members’ Section (IMS) is a great opportunity to get direct access to LYMEC! They can contribute to LYMEC working-groups and have the right to attend and speak at the congress.

Individual members, together with the Member organizations form the backbone of liberal youth politics in Europe. They elect their delegates to the congress via an online election in advance to the spring congress. All individual members that have paid their membership fee can vote at this election of the IMS-delegates to the LYMEC congress. The amount of IMS-delegates depends on the membership figures of the IMS. The more IMS there are, the more IMS-delegates can be elected.

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Background

Established in the 70’s, LYMEC originally was a pure umbrella organisation of national liberal youth organisations, i.e. LYMEC’s members were national liberal youth organisations only.

However, the political environment in Europe has changed incessantly within the last decades. Nowadays more than 80% of legislation in the European Union is made on the European level and then transformed into national law. Therefore a focus on solely national issues is not sufficient anymore to ensure a strong influence of liberal thinking in the European decision making processes. In order to cope with these challenges LYMEC as early as 1997 established the Individual Members Section (IMS) for expanding its workforces and providing more young liberals a platform to stand for liberal matters on the European level. In fact, the idea to enable individuals to get involved in European politics and thus assume public responsibility is a truly liberal approach and not applied in other European parties yet.

Moreover the entire situation is rather unique as never before in modern history democratic parties faced decision making going beyond their field of activity in that extend.

The Potential

The dialogue with civil society becomes more and more important for corporate and public decision making. The more influence multinationals and transnational institutions gain the more they depend on external expertise in order to find appropriate solutions for complex problems. The European Commission for instance engages external proficiency to carry out “Impact Assessments” in order to judge major impacts of complex decisions throughout the European Union.

These trends put LYMEC in quite a similar situation as the political challenges that Europe faces in future will require more than separate part solutions on the national level. The Individual Members Section is the key element for LYMEC to profit from the experience and knowledge of people from many different backgrounds. Furthermore these people will share the experiences they gained in LYMEC with others in civil society and thus spread liberal ideas and publicity for LYMEC. The IMS must be attractive to people who cannot rely on being integrated into LYMEC by a national party.

IMS Internal Rules

We are pleased to say that after several months of work, the IMS Working Group has concluded the Individual Members’ Section Internal Rules.

It results from the contributions of over ten members, Delegate and the Bureau representative for the IMS. The process was as open and transparent as possible, with communications being made to individual members, showing the drafts and asking for comments and further contributions. In cooperation with the Bureau, it was ensured that the present document was consistent with all LYMEC official documents.

The changes introduced to LYMEC Statutes in the Sinaia Congress 2010 created new challenges, brought by new rights and responsibilities. The Individual Members’ Section has now the instrument to deal with it.

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