By Katrīna Leitāne, President of the EESC Youth Group

Young people's interests are underrepresented in policy-making globally, but they are ready, willing and able to contribute. Including young people's perspectives in the EESC's outputs will lead to more representative and resilient EU policies. As the house of European civil society, the EESC should be the main EU institution that represents the voices of young people. 

For some years now, the EESC has been working on how to better integrate the voices of young Europeans in its work and in the EU decision-making process. The EESC Youth Group was set up one year ago to formalise youth participation. Through the opinion on The EU Youth Test, published in September 2022, the EESC became the first EU institution to commit to its implementation. In April 2024, the EESC took another big leap forward by approving the methodology to apply the EU Youth Test at the EESC. 

The EU Youth Test is a tool designed to strengthen youth participation and youth mainstreaming in policy-making. It includes consultation, impact assessment and mitigation measures. At the EESC, this means that youth representatives will engage with EESC members while drafting selected opinions. Concretely, youth representatives will participate in meetings and hearings, provide written contributions, and possibly follow the uptake of the opinions. One youth representative per opinion will work on behalf of all interested youth organisations. 

The initiative is currently in its implementation phase. In June this year, an open call for youth organisations to apply to take part was held and the EESC received more than 100 applications. The eligible youth organisations will be regularly informed of new upcoming opinions, and they will be asked if they would like to work on any upcoming opinions. The Bureaus of the EESC sections and its Consultative Commission on Industrial Change (CCMI) will ultimately decide what opinions will go through the EU Youth Test at the EESC. 

Experiences from a very successful pilot project helped the Youth Group prepare this methodology. Each of the EESC's sections/CCMI selected one opinion and successfully involved a total of 20 youth representatives. The topics of these opinions were varied, from the European Semester to defence of democracy. 

The EESC Youth Group is working to find the best way to meaningfully involve youth organisations. The next step is to start applying the initiative and to regularly review and improve it as we go along!

If you are interested in knowing more, please see our webpage EU Youth Test at the EESC, or contact the secretariat at youtheesc@eesc.europa.eu.