Keywords

1 Introduction

The EU seems to be aware of the need to bring young people closer to European politics. Over the years, it has increased the budget of Erasmus+, a funding scheme for youth exchange programmes and other projects. It also strengthened its cooperation with the European Youth Forum—a platform of national youth councils and international youth organisations. Programmes like Erasmus+ are intended to ‘improve the skills level of young people, support their participation in democratic life and in the labour market, and promote active citizenship, intercultural dialogue, social inclusion and solidarity’ (European Parliament 2022). The European Youth Strategy 2019–2027 is another instrument to develop a common approach to include European youth, their needs and wishes in EU policy-making. However, the EU does not have the competence to shape all policies relevant for the implementation of this strategy, and the pure existence of its framework and support tools cannot guarantee that their intentions are realised.

The present chapter deals with the question of how the EU approach can be supported and implemented in a more systematic manner to provide all young EU citizens equal opportunities to use their formal rights. In doing so, it focuses on national governments but also regional authorities in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania as the five countries studied in this volume. This does not mean that these countries form a region of similar ‘problematic cases’ that need particular supervision and advice. Instead, the approach is based on the assumption that in general, ‘all support mechanisms need to be tailored to the context of a given country’ (see p. 6 in Bárta 2020). Thus, since the living conditions across Europe are diverse, reaching a common goal might require different methods or supportive measures.

The contribution first briefly describes the EU youth strategy with particular attention to the challenges of developing a joint policy in a complex multi-level system with diverse context conditions in which the EU does not have relevant own policy competences. Afterwards, it sketches out five policy recommendations with particular attention to macro-regional as well as subregional peculiarities. They refer to the experiences and empirical patterns described in the previous chapters and are based on additional analyses of certain aspects, as well as studies on democracy and the region. Finally, a brief conclusion and outlook follow.

2 The EU Youth Strategy and the Complex Multi-Level Policy Setting

Since the late 1980s, aspirations have grown in the EU to coordinate youth-related concerns across EU member states. However, the Union does not have competences in the fields of public education and youth work. Thus, it ‘can only complement and support national youth policies’ (see p. 140 in Banjac 2014). This is why the EU tried and tries to bring many actors and agencies across all levels of its multi-level system together to develop a general framework for a youth policy. The policy framework is then implemented in a similarly complex way—‘on the European level through relatively new modes of governance, namely the Open Method of Coordination which is a non-binding, intergovernmental framework for cooperation and policy exchange, and through the Structured Dialogue which serves as a forum for continuous joint reflection between young people and policymakers across the EU in the youth field’ (see p. 140 in Banjac 2014). These actors are not always working hand in hand, even if they come from one country (de Hofmann-van Poll 2022).

In 2017 and 2018, participants of the sixth cycle of the EU’s ‘Structured Dialogue’ with young people, decision-makers, researchers and other stakeholders at the local, national and EU level elaborated the so-called European Youth Goals. One of the 11 goals was ‘Moving Rural Youth Forward’. This meant ‘to ensure equality for young people in urban and rural settings’ and ‘creating conditions which enable young people to access their rights and fulfil their potential in rural areas’. More specifically, this goal was intended to be reached by ensuring an appropriate infrastructure in rural areas, sustainable, high-quality jobs, the decentralisation of different activities by, for and with young people, the active participation of young people in rural areas in decision-making processes and equal access to high-quality education and establishing a positive image of rural areas and protecting rural traditions (Council of the EU 2018).

The EU’s ‘Youth Strategy 2019–2027’ adopted in 2018 included these goals and invited national and EU decision-makers ‘with due regard to the subsidiarity’ to ‘draw inspiration’ from them. The strategy mentioned as ‘core areas of the youth sector’ in quite general terms to engage, to connect and to empower people (Council of the EU 2018). For the EU level, existing programmes and funds, such as student exchanges, the European Solidarity Corps, European Structural and Investment Funds or Horizon 2020, should be used to realise the strategy. Evidently, the member states were not obliged by the framework paper to take particular measures. Thus, the EU depends on the willingness of national partners to cooperate.

As one instrument to encourage further coordination, the ‘EU Youth Dialogues’ were establishedFootnote 1 ‘with the aim of including more decision-makers and young people, especially those not-listened-to and/or with fewer opportunities in decision-making processes and the implementation of the EU Youth Strategy, fostering their engagement and their political participation with the EU and society at large’ (see p. 6 in Council of the EU 2018). From January to July 2020, events and projects within the seventh Youth Dialogue dealt with the sub-topic opportunities for rural youth, including the European Youth Conference. Taking up some of the results, the Council of the EU adopted in May 2020 the ‘Conclusions on Raising Opportunities for Young People in Rural and Remote Areas’. With this document, it renewed its invitation to decision-makers at all levels to ‘include in relevant strategies and policies, where appropriate, action plans or measures which reflect young people’s perspective and views in rural and remote areas’ (Council of the EU 2020).

3 Policy Recommendations

While the EU has opened up to youth participation, it has not yet reached out to the large majority of young people who are not organised (Pušnik and Banjac 2022) and not informed about EU issues. The Council of the EU has repeatedly called the member states to use synergies between its own and the EU youth measures for a broader engagement. In the ‘Conclusions on Raising Opportunities for Young People in Rural and Remote Areas’ adopted in May 2020, it renewed its invitation to decision-makers at all levels to use ‘synergies between different EU initiatives and instruments in the youth field and beyond’ (Council of the EU 2020). The following section presents five policy recommendations for actors in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. They sketch out how they could support the EU youth strategy to ensure that their young citizens, especially in rural areas, have the same opportunities to use EU citizenship rights and to effectively represent their interests in EU politics as their peers in other regions.

Recommendation 1: National teaching, youth work and funding programmes should include EU-related issues on an obligatory basis

In the 2021 European Parliament (EP) Youth Survey, people between 16 and 30 years of age were asked how much they feel they understood about the European Union. Of the respondents across the EU member states, 55% indicated that they do understand not very much or nothing at all about the EU. In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, it was even 63–64% of the respondents (see p. 13 in European Parliament 2021). These data are supported by the fieldwork and interviews for this volume. Many students in our 20 group discussions in very peripheral areas, especially those in professional high schools, showed a limited awareness of EU policies and the rights connected with EU citizenship. Nearly none of all 171 students participating had ever heard about the Conference on the Future of the EU which in principle had been very open to participation.

Therefore, to ensure even access to EU-related knowledge all over Europe and in all regions of the member states should be a key task for national governments. While the EU is covered by the curricula of secondary education, in practice it often plays a limited role. Interviewees in the Czech Republic and Slovakia argued that this is related to the fact that the schools can partly decide on what is de facto taught. This corroborates analyses of citizenship education in general. A study on the Czech Republic states that it is ‘marginalized on both school and national level, and much of the needed support for teachers willing to teach citizenship education in a participative way is provided by non-profit organizations that are not systematically supported and struggle with their own existence’ (see p. 112 in Urbanová 2016). However, schools in rural areas were reported in several chapters of this volume to be often not willing to cooperate with EU-related projects, especially in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. As mentioned several times by project organisers interviewed for this volume, linking different EU-related measures, like school education and civil projects or national and EU-related youth work, is generally still missing. Often the linkages only consist in the fact that individual actors take on several tasks, e.g. being a teacher and at the same time active in an NGO conducting a Youth Dialogue project.

Therefore, governments and parliaments should ensure that EU politics, rights and how to make one’s voice heard in Brussels are really taught at all schools. Instruments to reach this include clearer provisions in the national curricula and a stronger supervision of teachers or pupils’ competences. Additional measures would be helpful to underline that the governments are taking the issue seriously. For example, the Romanian Ministry of Education has repeatedly organised a national competition called ‘The European School’. Another instrument would be to recognise in the guidelines of national youth work EU-related issues and cooperation as a mandatory part, as it is suggested by the representatives of the East German NGO Die Villa (Jolly and Fikejzl in this volume). A next step could be to pay national subsidies for youth councils, NGOs or schools and public authorities if a certain share of EU-related projects is provided on a regular basis. This could include the ‘high politics’ of Brussels but also local topics related to EU policies or digital discussions with pupils or youth councils in other EU member states on issues they are interested in. In this way, young people would be encouraged to deal with the EU multi-level system and EU politics, and this might also enhance interest in national and local politics.

Recommendation 2: The countries should encourage and support initiatives in peripheral areas to ensure an appropriate share of EU-related projects in rural areas

The EU has not only called on member states in general to use synergies but has made specific suggestions on how to do so. In the ‘Youth Strategy 2019–2027’, the Council of the EU invited them, for example, to explore synergies between funding sources at EU, national, regional and local levels. Besides this, it demanded that young people and youth organisations should be actively engaged in the design, implementation and evaluation of relevant EU funding programmes (Council of the EU 2018). The EU strives to reach target groups via national platforms and youth organisations. Projects and events have been supported by Erasmus+ funding, for example, in its key action ‘Support for policy reform’, involving the action-type ‘Youth Dialogue projects’. A couple of such projects conducted in 2019 were described in this volume. Although the programme is open to all applicants, at least for the East Central European countries, just a few of the funded projects were coordinated by organisations in rural areas.

In general, the Erasmus+ funding sum per country correlated very highly (0.87Footnote 2) with the respective number of inhabitants. The uneven distribution thus refers mainly to the subnational level. As Fig. 1 reveals, in Poland, Romania and Slovakia, the share of funding that organisations in villages received for European Youth Dialogue projects in 2019 and 2020 was lower than the share of people who are living in rural areas. In Slovakia, a relatively large proportion of beneficiary organisations was registered in (medium size) towns. While such locations are closer to remote rural areas, it is unclear if the respective organisations really reach out to these regions. Moreover, in some countries, like Hungary, beneficiaries in some villages received funding for several projects (a pattern observable also for other categories of settlement) but do certainly not represent the entire rural population.Footnote 3 As it was reported by nearly all project organisers in this volume, most people in rural peripheries do not know about the possibilities of EU funding.

Fig. 1
A stacked bar graph of total share funding in countries. Poland. Villages, 22%. Towns, 8%. Cities, 70%. Slovakia. Villages, 30%. Towns, 45%. Cities, 25%. Romania. Villages, 35%. Cities, 65%. Czech Republic. Villages, 37%. Cities, 63%. Hungary. Villages, 59%. Cities, 41%. Values are estimated.

Total share of funding for Erasmus+ Youth Dialogue projects in ECE countries for coordination organisations in villages, towns and cities, 2019–2020. Own calculation, based on data in the Erasmus+2022 and Eurostat 2022 (inhabitants 2019). In Figure 1, municipalities were classified as villages if they have up to 50,000 inhabitants, as towns if they have up to 100,000 inhabitants and as cities if they are larger

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Given this situation, the second recommendation to actors in East Central Europe is to ensure that more NGOs and citizens in rural areas—especially in peripheral ones—apply for projects and benefit from the EU budget that the Union receives from the member states to realise projects which bring the EU closer to its citizens. To reach this, Eurodesk and other access points for information about the EU and its programmes could receive extra national (or regional) money if it goes to the villages and smaller towns or to schools to promote applications and offer advice. An alternative would be to support national networks of (paid) funding consultants, in addition to the Eurodesk.

Other tools to ensure that organisations in rural areas receive a proportional share of EU funding are to enhance capacity-building. In the countries under study, civil society organisations are still rather weak (Kutter and Trappmann 2010). Weak awareness of the need for a civil sector and the rather low social prestige of NGOs go hand in hand with often limited financial resources. This is why civil society actors in these countries lack influence on the agenda of transnational networks (see p. 60 ibid.). Therefore, it is suitable to provide investments from the state budget for those people from rural areas who intend to engage in EU-related projects of informal education and plan to apply for the first time for EU funding for such a project. Investment means that the later benefits from the action (here a better allocation of resources across all national types of settlement) will significantly exceed the costs of support. The instrument of paying ‘seed money’ is used, for example, by universities or the German federal state to encourage applications for large EU projects in sciences. It helps to create the organisational basis for the application and to develop the content of the projects. Another well-established instrument in Germany to stimulate the acquisition of large EU funding projects is to give applicants for EU projects extra money in case of success (and to announce this in advance). Especially for the target group of young beneficiaries from remote rural areas who often lack the resources for projects, this tool would set the incentives for applications to a substantial degree.

Policy Recommendation 3: Information about EU issues through social media should be increased

Many contributions in this volume revealed that young people in the remote rural areas of the countries under study feel there’s a long distance to the EU centres of policy-making. This is not an exclusive feature of rural areas. While the options for citizen participation in the EU have enlarged and are ‘relatively accessible’, they are in general ‘largely unknown among the European public’ and thus ‘often have a narrow user-base’ (see p. 6 in Hierlemann et al. 2022). People often do not feel well informed about EU politics. However, introducing a centralised strategy to change things would not be suitable because media usage is still characterised by national patterns. In the countries under study, social media are much more the preferred source of information for young people than in all EU 27 countries. This is why member state actors, especially in this region, should support the dissemination of EU-related information through social media.

In many of the group discussions reported in this volume, students referred to the relevance of social media content and influencers. Also in the 2021 European Parliament Youth Survey, nearly half of the young people in the region covered by this volume indicated that they receive most information on political and social issues from social media and news websites (Table 1). School, college or university or printed newspaper and magazines are much less relevant for receiving information on political and social issues than in all 27 EU member states. The kind of social media which are used also differs from other countries. Facebook and YouTube are much more used in the countries under study than all over Europe. While Instagram is also prominently used, it is still less widespread than in other EU countries. Twitter, TikTok and WhatsApp are also much less widespread than abroad (see p. 46 in European Parliament 2021Footnote 4).

Table 1 Sources from which people aged 16 to 30 get most of their information on political and social issues (%)
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In sum, digitalisation and using the right digital channels might provide a chance for better reaching out to young people inside and outside rural areas (see Anders in this volume). However, it is not a solution as such but should be adjusted to the diversity of living conditions (see also Pentzold and Stein in this volume) and the interests of the target group. The dissemination of EU-related information must also respect media freedom and the plurality of views and opinions on the topic. Therefore, it should be organised by independent agencies under the supervision of a pluralist board. Alternatively, youth and rural organisations could receive a budget to disseminate information through social media channels in their field of action because they know their target groups of young people and people in rural areas best. This was often mentioned by Youth Dialogue organisers interviewed for this volume. The allocation of money for this task could be monitored by a pluralistic supervisory body. This would help to build mutual trust and trust in the quality of the presented information, which is often relatively low regarding the public media in the country under study, when compared to other EU countries (see p. 49 in European Parliament 2021).

Policy Recommendation 4: The countries should improve language education or engage in improving AI translation tools for social media regarding EU issues

Being able to make one’s voice heard within the EU multi-level systems (both at EU level and in transnational contacts) depends also on the capacity to communicate without the loss of information. Often, English is perceived as the lingua franca. However, four of the countries under study in this volume (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania) belong to the lower third of EU member states with regard to the share of respondents who declared in the 2021 EP Youth Survey to be able to have a conversation in English (see p. 54 in European Parliament 2021). For talking about complex and nuanced issues like the future of the EU or policy preferences, a conversational level is still not enough (see p. 140 f. in Hierlemann et al. 2022).

While the EU translates its main documents to all official languages, this is not true for many websites with information on programmes, funding or participation. The same is true for social media apps. While they have improved their translation tools, translations are still often poor (especially with less frequently used languages) because they do not recognise the different meanings of words depending upon the respective context of the post. Moreover, Instagram or other social media help users to read other languages by translating written texts, but not with writing comments in another language.Footnote 5 This means that social media apps in general cannot be used sufficiently for advanced political discussions.

It was clearly observed that language restrictions obstruct opportunities for using the formal rights of participation. All Youth Dialogue project organisers interviewed for this volume mentioned that a limited command of the English language hampers the use of advanced EU projects, which include consultations with EU policy-makers or international exchanges. This is also true for the use of participation offers provided by the EU. Language restrictions thus ‘have knock-on effects for the representativeness of the submissions received—not merely in terms of a geographical balance, but also regarding other demographic factors. When consultations are available only in English, French and German, this effectively allows for contributions from highly-educated multilingual citizens from all over Europe, while the “ordinary public” can only participate from English-, French- or German-speaking countries’ (see p. 141 in Hierlemann et al. 2022). The effects are far-reaching. Consultations are in general dominated by stakeholders from member states in northern and western Europe (Alemanno 2020). This challenge is not addressed adequately in many publications or policy recommendations dealing with youth participation (e.g. in Fennes and Gadinger 2021).

To ensure that their population can effectively use their EU citizen rights, governments must guarantee that students of all schools in all regions enjoy the same access to appropriate language education. This will probably take its time. A highly effective way to compensate for language restrictions, also in the near future, would be to make AI translation tools for translating content from EU websites—including videos—into the local language even more popular and accessible to a broad national public, e.g. via their own websites. Moreover, professional translation tools should be promoted and offered for all national actors who deal with EU issues, including schools, administrative bodies or NGOs. Finally, the countries can engage in improving AI language tools for videos, messengers, oral communication and other forms of dialogue. Transnational cooperation between the countries would be suitable to drive this process and to use synergies.

Policy Recommendation 5: National digital information campaigns and online voting should be used to increase willingness to participate in European Parliament elections

To participate in elections is the easiest way of political participation. This view is supported by an even higher share of people aged 16 to 30 in the five countries under study than in the EU 27 (44.2% compared to 41%) according to the abovementioned EP Youth Survey (see p. 34 in European Parliament 2021). However, electoral turnout for European Parliament elections is often very low in these countries when compared to West European member states. This can lead to a representation deficit which reinforces a lack of willingness to use the benefits of EU citizen rights. It would be in the interest of national actors to ensure that the interests of all people of a country have the same chance to be heard at the EU level.

In the fieldwork of the Leipzig Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence (JMCoE) reported in this volume, we conducted a survey of pupils in very peripheral areas. The participants were class-mates of those 16- to 17-year-old students who took part in the group discussions (see Will and Vogel in this volume). We asked them a question that was also included in the EP Youth Survey.Footnote 6 An overwhelming majority of the 265 respondents (84.2%) in our survey indicated that they would be more inclined to participate in the next EP elections if more information were provided on the impact of the EU on their daily lives. Ranking in the second place, 78.2% of the pupils indicated that they would be more inclined to vote if voter registration could be easily done online. Around 77.2% answered they would do so if more information were provided on the programmes and objectives of the candidates and parties in the European Parliament. Around 76.4% would be more inclined to participate in EP elections if EU citizens were more involved in the decision-making processes within the Union and 67.2% if they received better information about the candidates for President of the European Commission.Footnote 7

A comparison with the 2021 EP Youth Survey results indicates that these measures could be especially useful to make EP elections more representative regarding the particular target group of young people in very peripheral areas. While the answers that were given most frequently in our survey ranked also on the top in the EU-wide Youth Survey (in another ranking), the share of the two most preferred measures to increase the inclination to vote in EP elections was much higher with our 16–17-year-old pupils in very peripheral areas than in the EU 27 countries and the respondents from the countries under study in the EP Youth Survey. For example, the share of those who declared that providing more information on everyday life would increase their inclination to vote in EP elections was much higher when compared to what the respondents from all over Slovakia (+19 percentage points), the Czech Republic (+14) and Hungary (+7) answered in the EP Youth Survey. The share of our students that found online voter registration increasing their motivation to vote was much higher than the respective share of all respondents in the 2021 EP Youth Survey from the Czech Republic (+13) and Hungary (+9).

Based on these data, two measures would be suitable, especially with regard to young people in very rural areas, to ensure a higher voter turnout: firstly, national digital information campaigns on elections, showing the impact of the EU on the life of citizens in rural regions, for example (like the funding of local infrastructural projects), and demonstrating the possibilities to be involved in EU politics, and, secondly, the possibility of online voting. However, in principle, these recommendations also correspond with the wishes of the EU 27 youth in general.

4 Conclusion

This chapter started with the observation that the EU is increasingly aware of the need to bring young people closer to European politics, mirrored by the European Youth Strategy 2019–2027 and other instruments to develop a common approach to include European youth. At the same time, it depends on the support by the member states to implement this strategy because it lacks its own competences to shape all relevant policies. The aim was to address the question of how the member states (more specifically, the actors in East Central Europe) can contribute to providing all young EU citizens equal opportunities to use their formal rights. In answering the question, the chapter referred to several findings of JMCoE fieldwork and other survey data.

Recommendation 1 was to include EU-related issues in national teaching, youth work and funding programmes on an obligatory basis and to increase the supervision of what young people really know about the EU. Recommendation 2 was that the countries should encourage and support initiatives in peripheral areas to ensure an appropriate share of EU-related projects in rural areas, e.g. by capacity-building. This includes financial support which is an investment because the benefit from this support for including rural areas better will exceed the costs. Policy recommendation 3 was that information about EU issues in social media should be increased. The main reason is that young people in the countries under study prefer social media to other sources for getting information about political and social issues. Policy recommendation 4 was that the member states should improve language education or engage in improving AI translation tools for social media regarding EU issues because language skills are a main precondition for using one’s citizen rights. Policy recommendation 5 was to use national digital information campaigns and develop online voting to increase the willingness to participate in European Parliament elections. This would not only address a particular wish of the target group of this volume but would also serve the interest of other young people all over the EU.

All in all, the chapter shows that measures to support rural youth and to encourage it to use its European citizenship do not necessarily have to be very costly. A regulation, like that mentioned in Recommendation 1, or cooperation with NGOs, like that mentioned in Recommendation 4, helps to keep the costs within limits and to use synergies. A support measure for better providing accessible information about the EU, for example, would also serve in the capacity-building of youth-oriented NGOs in rural areas which is necessary to improve their access to EU funding. To develop these ideas further could be the programme of national projects or international workshops with the participation of the target group, which itself would help to enhance EU citizenship and bring awareness to the ways of realising democratic participation. Universities could systematically accompany such efforts and examine which measures are particularly effective. Including such accompanying research in the study programmes would also allow students to apply methodological tools and at the same time enlarge their knowledge about the empirical conditions of EU citizenship. To enhance EU citizenship can thus take different forms.