The Challenge of engagement

With the lead-up to European elections on June 6-7, The European People’s Party Youth President Yannis Smyrlis spoke with Alia Papageorgiou on public engagement, his term as president and just how effective and direct the youth sector in European politics can be in getting their message across to EU leaders.

How long does the current Presidency of EEP – Youth last for?

Two years

How did you get involved with the EPP Youth?

Through the Greek Party New Democracy, I have been a member of theirs for 10 years, since 1999.

Ten years… How old does one have to be a member of a Youth Political organisation? Are there uniform limits?

Yes, I am under 30, I am 29… and 32 is the limit. So I even have another term in front of me. I was the International Secretary of ONED (New Democracy Youth) of Youth EPP and that is how I was involved in the Youth of the European People’s Party as a representative there. There are elections, countries can have candidates and by working for three years on this I was a first-vice president. And then we tried for the first time in history to have a presidency. There was no opponent in this first attempt, there were two other people involved and I received 85 percent of the votes.

Can you explain what the EPP Youth is about …I assume you are people under 32 with an interest in politics. How else do you describe your activities?

The age of 32 is for Brussels, for Europe the age limit is actually under 35. EPP Youth is not just an NGO, or similar body. It is old; it has members of political youth organisations from EPP parties. We have 55 members from 38 countries. So if you put all the members of our members put together this gives you a total of approximately 1.5 million people. It is the biggest youth political structure in Europe, politically affiliated solely the scouts for example are larger but not political.

What are the main activities of the EPP Youth?

Every two months we have our council meetings, where we evolve our proposals, our ideas for Europe and for special needs of every country that might have a resolution or something. Further to this we have board meetings and extra events when we need to put pressure on special issues, for example in the Balkan region – we had a Balkan conference – which was an extraordinary event, where we tried to include leading politicians. This is our structural work in the organisation. The main point is that we want to express the opinion of the youth to a huge organisation, whilst encompassing and having as partners the youth of Merkel, the youth of Sarkozy, the youth of Berlusconi, the youth of Karamanlis and so on.

Would you describe the European youth as politically motivated at the moment? Is it a struggle to get them interested and involved? Do you have time to meet people that are not involved?

Yes, of course, this is the point- to express that together, if we are involved, we can have the power in order to be in the decision rooms and influence a little bit at least, or at least safeguard our own ideas of how we see Europe in the future. Of course, the one part is Europe and another part is how we can use Europe in our countries and the other one, because we don’t have only the European members, but members from 38 countries. So our issues touch on the neighbourhood policy as well, on human rights policies in countries such as Eastern Europe as well.

It is how we can give an opportunity to young people from the Balkans and Eastern Europe to come to Europe to study and work in a way that allows for their sharing in the same values. We are exerting a lot of our efforts on this point, with help from some big foundations who are organised in this sector and help us financially. I think that in the last two years we have accomplished some things that are quite important, like for example, we had a meeting in Croatia, a meeting for the first time, with Ministers of Education from the entire Balkan region, we brought them to the same table.

They hadn’t met before in a format of this kind, and we organised this in order to explain to them, that they must follow the programme of the European universities. They must have the same way of working, so that their youth can be recognised if they for example want to go and study for a Masters degree in universities in England or France, for example. Now, you say you are coming from Serbia or Croatia, from the University of Belgrade for example, and you are not accepted, because you cannot be evaluated.

The important result is that they agreed on that, then the implementation - that they should do it and next month there will be a second meeting in order to settle how to achieve this. As the Youth of EPP, we have the EPP party and the EPP-ED group (the most powerful one), we have a lot of powerful people – President Barroso and Commissioners – so the doors are open or can be open for us. It is in our hands.

What means do you have to get your message across to the EPP group? How often do they listen to what you would like to say?

We participate, for example, I as the President participate in the political bureau of the EPP. We also organise events together in the European Parliament and up till now, all MEP’s have been very open and interested in my proposals. And this includes the President of the European Parliament Mr Hans Gert Poettering and the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Durao Barroso. President Barroso spent 45 minutes with us discuss and creating proposals. We were not talking about the future of Europe just in general – there are things crucial for us.

So how do you see the future of Europe? And what are your more concrete plans?

The European Union at the moment is not in its prime condition, but of course, in a structure like this, where we don’t have a precedent or concrete historical examples of what could be the next step or steps it is difficult. Every five-10 years you have a crisis, which is usually political. A decade ago the monetary union was the largest concern. Is the Euro is preferable for everybody? And as we have seen in the current crisis, if it had not been for this currency smaller countries’ economies would not have been kept alive.

The thing is, that for us it is crucial to have a Lisbon Treaty and be more political – so that Europe has a face. For example, during the last six months of the French presidency with the EU chaired by Nicolas Sarkozy we felt, that the EU is a global player and it was all because of the French President. Now, it is not the same. Now again, we have realised, that it was a big change for the EU, because of the big man who could do that. If you go for an elected president for the EU, then he will have the power behind him to act as the EU and to put them all at the same table to come to agreements.

If we don’t do that, the EU will collapse or will just remain a common market, what is totally different to what the big leaders had in their minds. In youth we believe we should continue what is of course easier for us, for my generation, the European generation as we call it– we don’t have the experience of before, so we see that either way we have already gained and have only to gain from this in the future; within the areas of culture, more opportunities for life, feeling that you are not so alone and you are stronger. Unlike my father, I can understand that I am not only Greek but I am also European .

What is the Greek environment at the moment? Do you see any interest in the EU elections – in voting, in being heard in ways that are not violent?

They are not violent anymore, things are quite peaceful now. The problem with youth organisations not only in Greece, but all around Europe, is that especially in times of financial crisis they more than ever do not feel, that politicians are doing something for them. As for the EU elections, 80 percent of the EU citizens cannot really understand the difference between the EU elections and national elections and discussions tend to mainly focus on national topics. Our job in this, as a youth political party is to promote the more European discussion through our members. We give the umbrella to them, for example in Greece ONED is not just ONED but all over Europe it has 1.5 million partners through the Youth of the EPP.