Brussels, 04/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has welcomed the fact that last year 6,000 young Europeans met up in Strasbourg for the European Youth Event (EYE) 2014 in order to “come up with fresh ideas for a better Europe”. The European Parliament is pleased that young people want to get involved in politics and issues affecting the daily lives of citizens. A group of these participants, whose ideas were particularly relevant, has had the opportunity over the past few weeks to meet MEPs during the hearings organised by the different Parliamentary committees. During these hearings, young people were able to directly address key subjects debated during the Event. The hearings kicked off on 2 December 2014 with a presentation to the employment and social affairs committee and continued throughout January with presentations to six other committees: constitutional affairs; culture and education; foreign affairs; industry, research and energy; civil liberties, justice and home affairs; and environment, public health and food safety. The ideas put forward related to several subjects important to young people, such as voting age, Internet access, recycling, immigration, production models and European values. The issue of youth unemployment was the key area focused on. Young people called on the MEPs to promote a dual system of education that better prepared students for the demands of the labour market as well as more support for quality internships. Security and foreign affairs were also areas that were taken into account. In this context, the young participants put forward a number of ideas such as stronger cooperation in the defence arena and intelligence, in an effort to respond to external and domestic terrorist threats. Info: https://storify.com/EYE2014/eyehearings . (IL)