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These developments need relatively little elaborating in detail here: once one is aware of
them, more detailed information is available on the relevant websites.
First, however, I wish to make some more general points about the idea of youth policy.
The most important point is that all countries have a youth policy – by intent, default or
neglect. In other words, young people continue to have to live their lives, whatever the
policy context. That context may be active or passive, purposeful or punitive, enabling or
restrictive, supportive or regressive. Whatever it is, that is the youth policy. Ideally it is
comprehensive and positive, complementary and optimistic, constructed through dialogue
and reflecting an overarching framework of governmental and non-governmental activity
directed towards young people – at, for and with them. As the European Youth Forum has
often said, ‘nothing about us, without us’.
Though most countries in both the Europe of the EU and the wider Europe of the
Council of Europe face many similar issues, there are also key differences in the ‘social
condition’ of young people in different countries. Thus there can be no supranational
blueprint for ‘youth policy’: it always has to be tailored to the specific challenges facing
particular contexts. The scale of those challenges (such as youth unemployment, youth
crime, or levels of youth participation) will differ, as will the available resources and the
political will to do something about them. Nonetheless, as Lauritzen and Guidikova have
observed, the time when the nation-states of Europe ‘made’ their young people has passed;
now is the time when young people across Europe have to ‘make’ themselves and the
communities in which they live, and so there is a prima facie case for equipping them with
the resources that they need for this task. What is patently clear in our emergent and
enlarging Europe is that there is a massive ‘youth divide’ both within and between its
constituent members. A fundamental challenge will be to balance the quest for greater
autonomy, which is the cry of arguably more included young people, with the extension of
greater support, which is what youth research clearly suggests is needed by more vulnerable
young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
The idea of a European ‘youth policy’ remains fragile and flexible: it is still in the early
stages of development and too much certainty and prescription would not only be
inadvisable but also inappropriate. Nevertheless, at the European Youth Ministers for
Youth meeting in Bucharest in 1998, one expression of ‘the youth policy of the Council of
Europe’ was formally articulated and included the following points:
• Help young people meet the challenges facing them and achieve their
aspirations
• Strengthen civil society through training for democratic citizenship, in a nonformal
educational context
• Encourage young people’s participation in society
• Support the development of youth policies
• Seek ways of promoting youth mobility in Europe
This is one useful starting point. Since then there have been a number of further
significant developments.
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