CESI Youth supports Youth Tests for new EU legislation

In its position CESI Youth stresses:

• The European Year of Youth was an important initiative during times of political, social, and economic changes that have been taking place and have affected the (working) lives of young persons profoundly. It encouraged young people to play an active role in shaping their own future and that of their communities, as well as to promote a sense of European identity and citizenship.
• This was reflected in Decision (EU) 2021/2316 which formalised the European Year of Youth and which specified that the European Commission was supposed to enable youth organisations “to assist in co-creating and implementing the European Year” in including by means of joint meetings with representatives. However, despite greater attention given to youth policies in 2022, CESI Youth believes that the European Year of Youth lacked an adequate and inclusive monitoring mechanism.
• The European Year of Youth must imperatively be followed by the introduction of a Youth Test – an impact assessment tool to ensure that young people are considered when new EU laws are made – as proposed by the European Youth Forum (EYF) and endorsed by the European Parliament in its resolution of November 24 2022 on the European Year of Youth 2022 legacy. CESI Youth supports such Youth Tests for any new EU policies and soft law measures as a sound way to anticipate ex-ante and measure ex-post impacts of policies on young people, in order to showcase, at the end, what real changes were achieved.

The full position is available here.