PES Leaders meet before 18 June Council summit
The first - after the European Parliament elections - PES Leaders' Meeting took place in Brussels on June 18th. In the meeting, the electoral result was evaluated, and the future political strategy of PES was planned. Petroula Nteledimou, President of ECOSY - Young European Socialists, and Janna Besamusca, Secretary General, took part in the meeting.
In her contribution, Petroula Nteledimou stressed, among other things, the following:
"For us, young European socialists, social democrats, labourists and progressives, the most worrying element of the European elections was the abstention of young people. We believe that there are various reasons for this: First, young people do not feel - and indeed, they are not - included enough in politics and in the decision-making processes. Second, most European parties - also the socialist parties sometimes - use rather introvert campaigns and policies, aiming at their traditional voters, and not trying to mobilize new voters and namely young people. Third, the political message of European political parties remains unclear and confusing; let me remind you that even we, progressive forces, speak more of the crisis and less of the solutions. Fourth, the fear game: young people do not go to vote because they are afraid, they only vote with hope as their criterion - and in these elections hope was not enough. Fifth, we do not feel there is enough transparency in politics - especially European politics: young people do not know what exactly is happening in the European institutions, why they vote, what they vote for. And finally, European Union lacks youth policies: people tend to think that tackling youth unemployment is enough policy for the young people. But young people are active and interested and participating in politics already since 16 - before entering the labour market. So, let us turn to youth policies with more effectiveness and honesty, and not in a fragmented way.
ECOSY will hold in the next period a big and integrated debate on the future of our movement, and on youth participation. We feel that our family needs this debate, in ideological, political and communicative terms - especially the way the European institutions tried to approach young people was, in our opinion, a big mistake: the communication campaign for youth participation was more appropriate for Eurovision contest than for the European Elections. We also believe that it is an emergency to strengthen our links with social partners and civil society, and to include more the European Union in our discussions: Europe cannot be the topic of debate only one month every five years, but every day, also in our national and local elections.
We will initiate this debate already in the IUSY Festival in a month from today in Hungary, where you are all invited, as we would be very interested to share our concerns and views with you.
Furthermore, in the next year, one of our main priorities will be the new Youth Pact, which will be proposed by the Spanish Presidency - and we are very happy that a Socialist Prime Minister, President Zapatero, took the initiative to put this as one of his priorities. For us, the new Youth Pact should include concrete policies for the young people - meaning rights, opportunities and possibilities, but also new, effective forms of participation and inclusion of young people. What we really need, is a concrete roadmap for the young generation on how to grow up in justice, equality and solidarity in the European Union. Therefore, we urge you to include it also in your own priorities for the next period.
Finally, I would like to inform you that ECOSY intends to build a network of young MEPs within the Socialist Group in the EP, in order to help promote this agenda better, together also with the European Youth Forum "Youth Agenda 2009-2014". Our Vice-President and newly elected MEP, Katarina Nevedalova, will coordinate this network".