The first day of the Conference

The primary aim of this conference is to finalize the outcome of the structured dialogue between young people and decision-makers that was implemented in the past 18 months on the theme of youth employment. This dialogue consist of three phases and the third phase is to be concluded during the Hungarian EU Youth Conference.


Mr. Peter Matjasic, president of the European Youth Forum (YFJ) talked about the participation saying that it is about having the rights, the means, the space, the opportunity, the necessity to support to participate in and to influence decisions, to engage in actions and activities so as to contribute to build a better society. Young people should be able to participate in the environment in which they live. Young people are encouraged and supported to participate in the decision-making and activities in all aspects of their life. The participation of young people in their community, in society and in politics gives the opportunity in life to reach democracy and active citizenship in Europe and all over the world..

The Conference provides space for exchanging opinions and experience between young delegates from Europe and China as 6 Chinese participants were also invited to the event. The Conference is one of the flagship events of the EU-China Year of Youth initiative. The Chinese opening ceremony of the EU-China Year of Youth was held between 21-28 February 2011 in Beijing.

Cao Zhigang, director of the International Department of Tianjin Youth Federation hopes that they can communicate more with the Hungarian youth organizations during the year. They are working with young people and already done some youth exchanges between Chinese and Japanese youngster but now his organization would like to open the cooperation in the field of youth work with Europe. He wishes he could have more communication with Hungarian organizations in the future and could better understand each other in the future. This year they would like to send Chinese participants to Hungary to take part in a youth exchange with Hungarian young people. Next year they would like to invite Hungarian young people to Tianjin to an exchange program.

The Hungarian Presidency has the mandate as well as the responsibility to enable the participants of the EU Youth Conference to prepare the final outcome of the dialogue of the 18 months. The young delegates from Europe have just begun to discuss and express their opinions about the different youth employment priorities in 8 parallel workshops at the Budapest Business School (BGF). The EU Youth Conference will finalize a document of specific recommendations and proposals about the key topics of youth employment. The outcomes will serve as a basis of a resolution to be adopted by the Council of the European Union about the main messages of the structured dialogue during the EU Presidency of Spain, Belgium and Hungary.