The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in mid-September, during her State of the Union speech, that she would submit to the co-legislators a proposal to make 2022 the European Year of Youth (see EUROPE 12791/9).
The announcement had come as a surprise in the European Parliament. And MEPs, with only a few days to go before the Commissioners adopt the proposal in question, are torn between enthusiasm and concern.
On Monday 11 October, members of the Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) praised an “ambitious” and “welcoming” initiative, but expressed a number of concerns. This includes the financing of the European Year.
The representatives of European youth organisations, invited to participate in the committee meeting, were the first to ask for sufficient funds to be mobilised. Recalling that most of their organisations operate on a voluntary basis and with limited resources, they stressed that they would need support along the lines of the Commission’s ambitions to become involved in the European Year project.
Most MEPs supported this demand. The EPP, S&D, Greens/EFA and ECR coordinators also called on the Commission to mobilise new money and not to cut the budgets obtained for the two European programmes for young people: Erasmus+ (see EUROPE 12622/27) and the European Solidarity Corps (see EUROPE 12622/28).
Several MEPs insisted that this European Year project had not been envisaged at all when the two budgets were agreed to and that dipping into these envelopes would risk weakening the programmes.
However, it would appear that this request came too late. Themis Christophidou, the Commission’s Director-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, told MEPs that the funds used would come from the “communication” budget of these two programmes. €7.5 million is expected to be mobilised for this purpose.
“But this, obviously, cannot be all”, Ms Christophidou acknowledged, assuring that some 20 Directorates-General other than her own would be involved in the project, “including financially”.
MEPs asked that all this be detailed in the Commission’s proposal on the subject, which is expected to be adopted by the Commissioners and unveiled on Wednesday 13 October.
More broadly, they said they hoped that the Commission’s proposal as a whole would be complete and successful, so that it could be negotiated by the end of the year.
Like the Socialist Coordinator, Petra Kammerevert (Germany), many pointed out to the Director General that it was “incredibly ambitious” to expect the text to be negotiated and adopted in two months.
But this is an “unbelievable idea”, she said, assuring that the Parliament was ready to work quickly on this issue. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)