DYPALL Network represented in the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe

After the first nine months of his mandate in the Advisory Council on Youth (AC) of the Council of Europe, Gianluca Rossino, DYPALL Network representative, is sharing some reflections from this experience.

“As a representative of DYPALL Network, I have the privilege to sit in the Joint Council on Youth, the decision-making body of the Youth Sector, together with 29 fellow members of the Advisory Council and the representatives of the 46 government members of the CoE.

After the welcoming training last June, we finally met in October 2022 at the European Youth Centre in Budapest, with many items to discuss and some decisions to take. It has been an intriguing experience, being the first time attending a Joint Council meeting. After half a day dedicated to an exchange with the European Youth Forum, we focused on putting forward some proposals and deciding what would be the position of the AC on key topics, such as the continuation of the 2022 Youth Campaign on Revitalising Democracy. There I took responsibility for some of the points in the agenda, including the proposal to create a drafting group to define guidelines on the citizenship and participation of young people in public life, which will be established in 2023. Overall, what I can share about this sort of experience and institutional context is that it is very complex to engage in all matters discussed during a three days meetings, but it is crucial to be ready and share your point of view when you feel you have something to say and make it count.

A month later, I was invited again to Budapest as a representative of the Advisory Council for a seminar on Young people’s autonomy, also having the occasion to be one of the speakers on the introductory panel. You can find more information on that here.

Moreover, as Lead 1 in the portfolio related to Enter!, in December 2022 I was engaged in a consultative meeting involving the trainers of the long-term training course which has been focused on the topic, just concluded the month before, and a few other representatives of public authorities and civil society. There, we proposed some concrete actions to implement this recommendation further, and youth work impacts young’s people access to social rights, especially for those living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, such as closer cooperation with local and regional authorities and the creation of educational material to be easily accessed and get a training tool online.

In December 2022, I was again in Budapest for the 2nd Programming Committee (PC) of the year, the co-managed body responsible for the decisions on the activities to be held at the European Youth Centres of Strasbourg and Budapest, and on the funding requests submitted to the European Youth Foundation. In it, I am also part of the working group on study sessions, and I was the rapporteur for the working group on additional criteria for pilot activities, which finalized its work last November. The PC proceeded to adopt unanimously the recommendations we proposed.

More recently, in January 2023, I became Lead 1 in the portfolio “Cooperation with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities” of the Council of Europe. Until the end of this current month, we will be working on the selection of the new generation of Youth Delegates. Every year, only one young person per Member State is selected for this very formative and precious experience, which allows young people to join Congress’ activities and further introduce the youth perspectives in its policy work. Having had that opportunity, I can share how motivating it can be. 

To conclude, let’s look at the months ahead.

I will be taking part in the evaluation conference of the 2022 Youth Campaign (in Strasbourg at the beginning of February) and in the conference on Sustainability in Learning Mobility, which will be held in Germany a few weeks later.

The next meeting of the Advisory Council and Joint Council will instead be in March 2023 in Strasbourg, with new important issues to be discussed, and I look forward to sharing more about them in the following newsletters of DYPALL Network.”