1. Being President of the Youth Convention must have been a really interesting experience. How did you find it overall?

I have no doubts about it: it has been the most challenging experience of my very short political life. The Youth Convention was not an event of international youth organizations where you know exactly who is with you in the room, where you know the background of the members and you have already set in the statute the common aims. The Youth Convention was a group of 210 individuals with 210 different backgrounds, ideas and expectations towards the Convention itself. From the beginning we had no idea how it was going to end up, and we had to find it out on the way. This was a big challenge: living with unpredictable events. The only thing that was clear to me and to the other members of the Presidium and the rapporteurs was that on Friday morning we were going to present the result of our meeting to the senior Convention plenary, and that we had not been given a lot of time to do it. 48 hours to give the opportunity to every single member of the YC to express her/his opinion on every single issue is an impossible time schedule; and it would have been even worse if the Youth Forum members of the Youth Convention Steering Committee, which included the secretariat of the Convention, the European Parliament secretariat, the Commission’s Secretariat General, DG Education, and the Youth Forum, had not been successful in amending the original proposal of the Convention Secretariat, which had proposed a one-day working meeting only.

2. At the beginning, what expectations did you have about the Youth Convention? What did you hope to achieve?

Perhaps it is important to begin with my fears rather than with the expectations. I was afraid, and I have to confess that I still am, that those whole thing was intended to be primarily a PR event for the good image of the Convention rather than an event designed to give young people a real opportunity to make a contribution. You know the story: 210 young people, selected or designated with unclear procedures by the senior Convention members, meeting in the EP under the auspices of President Giscard d’Estaing. Although he stated that his aim was to “listen to the views of young people”, he in fact left the room when we were about to present our results to the Convention plenary on Friday morning. We had only two days to prepare a “visionary” contribution, trying to give everyone the possibility to influence the final result with her/his own specific idea, while still keeping the aim of making a coherent declaration at the end.

You can see that despite the ideal expectations we could have had, the reality was not really encouraging and you know that reality bites. Nevertheless after being bitten, I am proud to say that we by doing our utmost, we managed to achieve what we were hoping to achieve: a strong final declaration with clear demands to the senior Convention for a federal European Constitution based on democratic and accountable institutions; effective proposals on education; and a strong call for Europe to speak with one voice at the international level.

Despite the difficulties, the Youth Convention showed itself willing to be visionary and make radical proposals. Although many feared that it would end up being only a media exercise, we have shown, thanks to the commitment of the delegates, that we were able to overcome these obstacles, and to raise our voices loudly and clearly in favour of our shared vision of the shape of the Europe of tomorrow.

3. Looking back, what would you have done differently?

As a chair, I would really have liked to give more time for the participants to discuss all the delicate political issues more thoroughly. To have a real success in this kind of meeting, it is fundamentally important that every single participant feels ownership of what is produced. Even the ones whose amendments are not supported should still feel that it was worth taking part, because the chance to make a point is guaranteed to everyone. Unfortunately, because of the time restrictions this was not possible and that is why some people were dissatisfied with the general procedure. If there will be a second time I hope I would have learned the lesson from my own mistakes as well.

4. The Youth Convention has produced a strong result. What would you like to see happen next?

As I said before, I am still concerned about the whole approach from the side of the senior Convention, and I think that I will keep this feeling until I see with my own eyes a real follow up process taking place. The proposal of Vice President Dehaene to invite myself and the two Vice Presidents of the Youth Convention, Roberta Tedesco Triccas and Ellen Trane Nørby, to the sessions of the senior Convention is a very good sign that the Convention is interested in keeping the link with its juniors strong and alive, but on its own it is not enough. As we have presented in the conclusion of our declaration, we demand the involvement of youth organisations in the debate on the future of Europe. What has to be clear is that the commitment of active young people to be involved in the debate on the future of Europe did not start for the first time last week: for several years, youth organisations have been organising activities on this issue, for several years the Youth Forum has been gathering together representatives of international youth non-governmental organisations and and National Youth Councils from everywhere in Europe to exchange their views and opinions with each other on our future. The Youth Convention has to be considered as the first step taken from the side of the Convention to consult with young people and as a one of the steps of the thousand-mile journey that youth organisations are making in Europe.

5. Some people have complained that too many members of the Youth Convention were members of political and other organisations. What is your view on this?

I really think that we need to clarify some issues. First of all, we should ask who has complained. If it is the senior Convention or its secretariat, this would be bizarre, since the participants of the Youth Convention were selected and designated directly by the members and their substitutes of the senior Convention. This procedure was decided on by the Convention Presidium itself, while the European Youth Forum, on behalf of its 90 member organisations, was asking from the beginning for a different, and more transparent, procedure which would enable all youth NGOs to take part. It is hardly surprising that the politicians in the senior Convention selected politically aware young people to take part in the Youth Convention, especially as President Giscard d’Estaing himself in his speech on 28 February specified that the Youth Convention should take the senior Convention as its model.

The other source of criticism has come from amongst members of the Youth Convention, but here there are two distinct groups. One, composed of the minority of participants that came from non-political youth organisations or were not members of any kind of youth association, had a very fair complaint. It is true that the Youth Convention was not fully representative of active young people in Europe, and as a representative of the Youth Forum I am fully in agreement with them. As I said, the Youth Forum did propose alternative selection procedures but this decision was taken by the senior Convention, not by the young people themselves. This was a discussion we had with Vice President Dehaene at the Youth Forum Council of Members in the spring.

The complaints coming from another minority group, which accused the Youth Forum and the political youth organisations of hijacking the Youth Convention, is a different matter. This group has since the beginning claimed to be independent and neutral, but it became very clear that they were not at all independent and were working with the active support of Euro-sceptic political organisations. I support everyone’s right to organise themselves with like-minded people, but I think it is dishonest to conceal political affiliations in order to try to undermine an open process.

It is completely legitimate to have different views on the future of Europe, to be more or less federalist, to be for or against the EU, that is what a debate on the future of Europe should be about, but what is not acceptable at all is that a small group, highly politicized, tries to claim that the whole Youth Convention is a nonsense and its result should be not taken into consideration only because thay disagree with the orientation of the majority that is pro-European.

In general terms, I would like to repeat again that the position of the Youth Forum from the very beginning was to try to give space to all the different international youth NGOs to take part in the Youth Convention through the EP selection, and to involve the National Youth Councils in determining the composition of the national delegations through an open and transparent recruitment procedure, with a view to ensuring the participation of young people from various backgrounds. Unfortunately this did not happen, and in many countries the selection procedure was very obscure and lacking in transparency.

At the end of the day, the Convention is based on a debate on the Future of Europe which is a highly political debate, and it is therefore entirely proper that the debate taking place in the Youth Convention should also have been a political one.

6. There has been criticism that the organisation of the event was too much under the control of bureaucrats, without enough input from young people themselves. If there is a second meeting of the Youth Convention, how could it be organised differently?

As I have made clear, all the difficulties we have faced are a direct consequence of the unwillingness of the Convention Presidium and Secretariat to allow young people to be responsible for making their own decisions. There was real resistance to allowing young people themselves to determine their own work, and this placed very severe restrictions on the opportunities open to the Youth Convention. Nevertheless, I believe that we have managed to show that, as young people, we are able to work in a positive way and to overcome these difficulties, and to show, by producing a strong result, that young people should be given the opportunity to contribute: not only because they are young, but because they actually have something to say.

Now that the exercise is over, I can say that the cooperation between the European Parliament, the Commission, and the Youth Forum has been rather positive, and that the opportunity given to us by President Valery Giscard d’Estaing is a great one and we are grateful to him for this. I have also to say, however, that if the Convention Presidium is to show itself willing to continue working with us, which I sincerely hope is the case, then our final conclusions should be respected: namely, that “...we entrust our Presidium (Youth Convention) and the European Youth Forum to prepare a second session and to have an initiative of the Youth Convention to organise a broader and regular consultation of young people and youth associations across Europe during all the working time of the European Convention...”.