Strengthening the EU Youth Dialogue follow-up via monitoring and transparency guidelines

Key points

The EESC:

• underlines that youth participation mechanisms need to be transparent for every stakeholder and that the interests and concerns of young people need to be considered at each stage of the policy-making cycle;

• points at the importance of having monitoring and dissemination strategies in place in each youth participation mechanism to inform young people of the impact that their participation has had, including in EU Youth Dialogue (EUYD) processes;

• proposes that guidelines are set up to support the monitoring and dissemination of the EUYD outcomes and impact; such guidelines have the potential to support the fulfilment of the EUYD’s objectives and increase openness, transparency and accountability towards the numerous young people who participate in the EUYD processes, as well as towards the many others to whom the outcomes and impact are relevant;

• suggests that information on EUYD outcomes should be compiled at pre-agreed intervals and focus on all cycles of the EUYD to be able to track policy and other outcomes linked to particular EUYD cycles;

• proposes that an online repository should be set up where collected documents would be made available; this should be user-friendly, open, free, searchable and regularly updated;

• calls on the Commission and the Member States to support long-term, sustainable and well-functioning management of the EUYD, including the establishment of institutional memory and capacity building processes; in order to achieve this, the EESC suggests establishing a long-term EUYD secretariat supporting EUYD processes across various presidencies and continuously providing expertise, administration and data management.