European Year of Youth wants to put young talented women in the spotlight, strengthen the democratic participation of youth and improve traineeship conditions

The European Year of Youth initiative is designed to support young people, to recognise and help them recover from the pandemic, to enable them to be actively involved and to make their voices heard. Initiatives and campaigns to support young people will run throughout the year.  

One of these is the new social media campaign #SHEULeads, launched on 8 March 2022 by Commissioner Mariya Gabriel on the International Women's Day. This happened during the "How to celebrate extraordinary women: #EUwomen4future campaign seminar" event. The #SHEULeads campaign is an official part of the European Year of Youth and aims to give the visibility to talented girls and young women and encourage them to share their successes, experiences and challenges and how their participation in European programmes has supported them on their 'journey'. The aim is to inspire other young girls and women and show them that they can lead and that they they merit to be put in the spotlight. This campaign will run on social media with the hashtag #SHEULeads.  

As a step towards strengthening the democratic participation of young people and making their voice more visible, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), the European Youth Forum and other actors are starting to work together to co-create the European Charter for Youth and Democracy. The Charter will seek, through concrete recommendations, to improve the democratic participation of young people at local, national and European level and to ensure that their voices are formally, continuously and permanently represented in the European Union. Young people will be able to participate in the development of the Charter through workshops and online consultations, where they will be able to express their ideas and discuss with local and regional representatives and other stakeholders.  

The process of co-creating the Charter was launched during the 9th Summit of Regions and Cities in Marseille in early March 2022 and will run until the end of 2022. The final signing ceremony will take place in December 2022 at the plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions. More information can be found on the website of the European Committee of the Regions.   

Another important theme of the European Year of Youth is improving the working conditions of traineeships for young people in Europe. A first success in this area was achieved in February when the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) ordered Belgium to tackle the problem of unpaid internships for young people. They are being exploited as unpaid labour because of a the gaps in the legislation. This came as the result of a Collective Complaint submitted by the European Youth Forum (EYF) in May 2017.Belgium has already committed to address the problem.

The European Commission wants to take further action in this area and would like to hear the ideas of former and current trainees, as well as those who may be interested in a traineeship in the future. To this, the Commission has launched an online survey which is open until 18 March 2022. This survey will be followed by a public consultation on the same topic later in spring 2023, but aimed at a wider audience.