0145-‐15 Structured Dialogue
Structured Dialogue outreach -‐ Policy Commission COMEM -‐ Friday, April 17th 2015 Introduction The SD is a great tool for young people and decision-‐makers, to involve young people in decision-‐making. There is currently a big momentum amongst Member States (we noticed an increased participation in the EUYC in Riga) and in the European Commission (who wants the tool to reach out to more young people on local level). It is true that the Structured Dialogue as a tool, stays quite limited to those young people who are already interested in EU issues. The local levels (associations, as well as public authorities) are hardly aware of the Structured Dialogue, and usually fail to use it as a participative mechanism to involve local young people. Another challenge linked to the outreach, is the difficulty to actually visualise and identify the impact of the SD on policy making. Therefore, it is probably a strong element to develop in order to increase the outreach of the SD. For the purpose of this workshop, we have divided participants in 3 small groups. The main discussion outcomes can be found below each title. Outreach and visibility of the SD – How can we bring the SD closer to young people, and making sure that at local, national level, it’s used for enhancing policy dialogue between young people and decision-‐makers Follow-‐up and monitoring – How can we improve the follow-‐up and monitoring of the SD, so it becomes a more accessible tool for a lot of young people. More actors for more quality dialogue – Which actors need to be involved in the process at EU (in the EUYC and in general) and at National/local level (NWGs, other) to improve the process and make it more accessible for young people 1 0145-‐15 Structured Dialogue
Group 1: Outreach and visibility of the SD Challenges: • Media doesn’t really engage enough, as the SD is not seen as a very “newsworthy” item. • Very low understanding and knowledge of the SD from the local authorities. • When it reaches to young people, it’s seen as very complicated and abstract process. The language is a barrier (too much jargon) and therefore, it doesn’t attract young people outside the youth bubble. • Lack of visibility of the outcomes; make it difficult to reach out to more young people. • We do not know the outcomes of the SD Exchange of good practices: Germany: Put together a team of young people to do outreach in the regions. The members of this team may be paid some money via the German NYC/Ministry. Focus is that these outreach officers should be young people. UK: Two young ambassadors from each region (England, Scotland, Wales and North Ireland) who work with local youth council to spread word. Bulgaria: several meetings held in the mid-‐level cities (not capital, not smallest). They meet with young people and local municipalities – very low knowledge, even amongst the municipalities. Arranging training for young people and municipality reps. Latvia: Proposes a reach-‐out system through five regions, one local partner in each region. They try adapt SD process to local level issues, as it feels much more interesting for the young people to participate. YMCA: Runs a project called 1m voices – trying to get 1m young people to take a survey and to comment on key issues. They have three ways to do this: online survey, written offline survey, and then face-‐to-‐face interviews. Language of this is “you have been chosen!” which helps buy in, as opposed to going with “can you help me?”. Proposals: • Provide better information to local actors: o NWGs need to find local partners who can go into schools and universities and address directly young people. o Develop training for local authorities. o Better involve the governments, so they are full part of driving the process (and hence, more likely to use the results) 2 0145-‐15 Structured Dialogue
•
•
•
•
Shift the questions to meet local/regional needs, in order to use the Structured Dialogue as an umbrella initiative which provides framework for dialogue between young people and decision-‐makers. Develop more youth friendly materials and information o Create an “elevator pitch” for the SD that’s interesting and compelling. o Easy-‐accessible and youth friendly material o Common visual identity Ensure visibility of the impact of the Structured Dialogue. o Creating a monitoring system o Engage all actors into ensuring visibility of tangible outcomes. YFJ should facilitate for exchange of good practices and capacity building trainings on the SD 3 0145-‐15 Structured Dialogue
Group 2 – Follow up and monitoring Challenges: • Follow-‐up phase is underdeveloped in the Structured Dialogue. Until now, there is nobody responsible for the follow-‐up at the different levels. • There are too many recommendations and too many policy outcomes. Given the national processes running in parallel, it is often difficult to cope with such frequent policy output. • High turnover of the actors (e.g. NWG, INGYO), which makes it difficult to follow-‐up on previous SD Recommendations and their implementation. • There is little political backing to implement the EU Recommendations. The very general framing of EU youth policy recommendations makes it easy • Problem is that the focus is too much on the process of getting to the Recommendations and too little on the process of implementing and following-‐up on Recommendations. • NWGs are asked to do too many reporting already. An additional reporting would be extra workload Proposals: Clarify the roles of the Stakeholders in the monitoring system: • The European Commission should could the input from the NWGs on national/local implementations • No consensus on the role of the NWG: clearly they are the only actor able to monitor, but it would come down to too high workload to do so. Ensure space and time to do monitoring: • Use the European Youth Week that takes place every cycle, to review the implementation of the SD at National level, and engage in peer-‐review. • Use the EU Youth Conferences, to also look back in the past outcomes, and not only look forward. Ensure time, during the 3 EUYC of a cycle, to discuss and review local and national implementation of the SD. For that, delegates would have to be prepared so that they can identify what has happened in their country. The last EU Youth Conference of each cycle could also focus on formulating concrete implementation strategies. • The European Commission should make better use of the EU Youth Report. There should be a possibility to reframe the questionnaire that is distributed so that it really asks what policy outcomes comes from the SD and highlights the SD impact. Moreover, the EC should make mandatory the cooperation of the NYC with the government to answer those questions on national implementation of SD. • EACEA: EACEA reports under the grant could be used to report on the national follow-‐up and monitoring. Application is presented as the 4 0145-‐15 Structured Dialogue
National Action Plan of the NWG. Downside, you cannot report critically, when you are applying for a grant. Ensure visibility of the outcomes: • There could be an online space to collect and gather the outcomes of previous cycles. It should be created by the European Commission (if the European Youth portal, need to be re-‐pimped) but regulated by the ESC, to ensure that NWGs feed in the information on time. 5 0145-‐15 Structured Dialogue
GROUP 3 – More actors for more quality dialogue Proposals: • Cross-‐sectoral efforts need to be achieved to unlock the impact of the Structured Dialogue: o At EU level: with the involvement of other sectors of the European Commission in the implementation and follow-‐up of the Structured Dialogue, and with the involvement of other Committees of the Council of the EU. o At National level, with the involvement of National policy makers from different departments and sectors relevant for youth. • Clarify the role and reinforce the involvement of researchers, experts/sectors representatives and MEPS in the Structured Dialogue process: o At National level in the NWGs o At European level in the EU Youth conferences (not just as guest speakers, but as resource persons all along the conference) • Other EU Institutions/bodies such as the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions, The Perm Reps and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) need to play a role in the dissemination of the SD outcomes. • Better use of the funding available, by the NWGs, in order to involve national and regional stakeholders in the process. 6