Young liberal leaders call for action!

Please find the official document here!

Since its announcement, the European Liberal Youth (LYMEC) has welcomed the Conference on the Future of Europe as an opportunity for every citizen, and especially the youth, to be involved in shaping a common European future.

Both LYMEC and the European Liberal Forum (ELF) are committed to actively engage and participate in the Conference on the Future of Europe and expect the political leaders to use this exercise as a real opportunity to reform and shape the European Union. However, since its launch, the Conference has not managed to become the massive tool of participatory democracy that it was expected to be.  A big part of the youth in Europe has not even heard about the CoFoE. That tells us something. We believe that from here on, the Conference has to truly put an emphasis on institutional, national and regional level to reach out to those who are mostly affected by its outcomes - the youth.

We, the young liberal leaders, gathered between 17 and 19 September in Bucharest at the ELF Young Leaders’ Meeting 2021. Together, we call on the Conference on the Future of Europe to:

• Communicate clearly about the outcomes of the Conference and what the goal of this process is;
• Include transparency and participation in the process with monthly reports provided to the public and the media;
• Include youth organisations in the Conference as a direct outreach;
• Have a common pan-European campaign translated in each language and transmitted to all national media agencies. Ensure that air time is provided monthly at least by national broadcasters to devote to discussing the Conference and its progress;
• Have national leaders more involved in the campaign as EU ambassadors;
• Include local influencers in the campaign;
• Organise conferences on every societal level: Local gatherings, council meetings and parliamentary sessions as well as European discussions;
• Improve communication and promotion of the CoFoE: We need understandable and visually appealing material to be more actively shared on Social Media;
• Include future citizens of the EU, citizens of candidate countries or potential candidate countries, in the process;
• Prolong the exercise of the Conference to become permanent, giving a longer term scope to the Conference to keep an active dialogue on topics of current citizens going on;
• Make sure that citizens’ views are truly reflected upon, instead of turning the digital platform into a letterbox leading nowhere;
• Improve the digital platform and make it more intuitive for everyone from the EU and from other European Countries.

Presidents and Vice-Presidents of LYMEC member organisations came together and worked on this call for action to create change and impact the current process of the Conference. We hope you join the call because together we can do more!

On behalf of young liberal leaders,