Your Europe, Your Say! 2025

Your Europe, Your Say!

Giving Youth a Voice

On 13-14 March 2025, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) will bring together nearly 100 young participants and 37 teachers from EU Member States, candidate countries and the UK for its annual Your Europe, Your Say! (YEYS) event. This year, YEYS will focus on the role of young people in collectively shaping a resilient future. It aims to equip them to engage in civic action and continue to contribute to participatory democracy activities in their communities and beyond.

Concept and outline

YEYS 2025 will be a 1.5-day event featuring interactive sessions and collaborative workshops. Experienced facilitators will guide the sessions, helping participants articulate their views and shape recommendations which will then be used to convey their expectations, concerns, interests, priorities and hopes of a European future that matches their expectations.

The workshops will be structured around questions expected to inspire open communication and debate and to direct youth engagement and dialogue. Here are some examples of questions which could inspire the debates:

1. What kind of Europe do you want to live in, and what issues are important to you?
2. How do you envisage this European future and what role should young people play in shaping it?
3. What can young people contribute when it comes to forging a Europe that reflects the values and priorities of its people?

The participants will be encourage participants to think carefully about their beliefs, expectations and priorities and how they can participate in delivering on them.

During the discussions, participants will identify and explore possible steps for collaboration across borders, fostering a sense of unity and shared responsibility. The event is also a space for exchange amongst the different categories of participants; school students,  National Youth Councils and various youth organisations.

The event will culminate in a plenary session where participants will translate their ideas into recommendations. 

Follow-up of YEYS

The EESC Youth Group will follow-up by sharing the recommendations as potential input for advisory and political work carried out by the EESC. The Youth Group will also mention them in external events where possible and explore how to integrate them in the selected opinions going through the EU Youth Test at the EESC.

The YEYS recommendations could feed into the EESC’s second Civil Society Week, which will focus on Strengthening Cohesion and Participation in Polarized Societies and take place just one week later (17-21 March 2025). They could serve as a basis for youth-focused discussions during Civil Society Week and be shared with high-level representatives from the European institutions.

Format and style of YEYS 2025

In order to facilitate the participants’ involvement and engagement in the discussions, the YEYS workshops will be hosted using participatory leadership or The Art of Hosting methods. This is a highly effective way of harnessing the collective wisdom and self-organising capacity of groups of any size.

Based on the assumption that people give their energy and lend their resources to what matters most to them, the methods blend powerful conversational processes to invite people to take charge of the challenges facing them.