Like the EUI Forum on Democratic Participation and the Future of Europe, the work of the Young EUI Democracy Forum (YEDF) is concentrated around the intersecting issues of the restriction of civic space in Europe, the disconnection between decision-makers in Brussels and EU citizens, inequalities, and the relationship between the EU and the broader international community.
The YEDF tackles these issues from an angle to ensure that young people's voices in Europe are heard. Its members believe in the need to challenge the status quo, established structures, and ideas in the literature to reinvigorate actions and discourse on European democracy with a refreshingly young perspective.
The YEDF was established alongside the EUI Forum on Democratic Participation and the Future of Europe in late 2020 under the auspices of the EUI-STG Transnational Democracy initiative as an open-ended venture.
The YEDF was initially founded by a group of EUI-STG Master students and fellows, who are passionate about change and democratic empowerment but has since widened to include young researchers and early academics from the wider EUI community.
The YEDF will host its first kick-off meeting on the 30th of April.
Resources:
Informal Activism in the EU
Last update: March 2022
(1723 KB - pdf)
CoFoE Podcasts
On 10-12 December 2021, a group of 200 randomly selected citizens met at the EUI in Florence to discuss ‘democracy, rights, rule of law and security’ as part of a Citizens' Panel within the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). During the event, members of the Young EUI Democracy Forum were on the ground, speaking with citizens (both involved or uninvolved) as well as experts and politicians about their experience of the Panel and of the Conference. This podcast series, the fruit of those discussions, aims to give a voice to individual participants and to critically assess some of the organizational and substantive gaps that may prevent the CoFoE from becoming the democratic exercise that the EU so profoundly needs.
Episode one: Error 404 at the CoFoE
In the first episode of this podcast series Zakaria Al Shmaly, MA student at the School of Transnational Governance (EUI), discusses reflections by a randomly-selected citizen, Valters, who first thought the Conference was a scam, but ended up discussing the process in his country’s capital. Was the Conference a scam (literally and figuratively)? Was it representative of Europe? And what does it mean to be heard by the EU?
Episode two: From Florence to Riga
Our friend Valters was invited for a discussion with the previous mayor of Riga, who is currently an MEP. Listen here to find out who the MEP is, and what the two agreed and disagreed about. You can also watch the full interview (in Latvian) here.
Episode three: Embracing renewal or stifling change? Lessons and anecdotes from the CoFoE
In this episode, Andrea Gaiba, MA student at the School of Transnational Governance (EUI) and Giulia Torri, MA student at Bocconi University, took up the microphone, walked up to Badia Fiesolana in Florence and had some insightful conversations with the citizens randomly selected to participate in the CoFoE Panel II, Session III. Were the first meetings a success and what are the individual perspectives on this complex and challenging transnational, democratic exchange?
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