Keywords

1 Introduction

Citizens of the member states of the European Union enjoy the rights and achievements provided both by their own home country and by the EU. What sounds good in theory is, however, not without problems in practice. On the one hand, there is a lack of participation. On average, only half of all EU citizens participate in European Parliament elections. In the post-socialist countries, political participation is even less widespread. The electoral turnout is significantly lower than the EU average (see p. 26 in Solijonov 2016), and there are high levels of distrust in politics, especially when it comes to EU issues. On the other hand, there is a lack of representation. Young EU citizens’ needs and views mostly play a subordinate role in the EU, as critics contend. This is partly attributed to the fact that young people are simply outnumbered and partly to the myopic tendencies inherent in democratic systems (cf. Jacobs 2011; MacKenzie 2016; Smith 2021). Critics argue that as a result, not enough attention is paid to important issues such as climate change, which will massively affect young people in particular.

However, the EU is aware of these problems around citizenship and has, for example, declared the year 2022 as the European Year of Youth (European Youth Portal 2022). It also regularly organises or funds projects to encourage people to become more involved in European civil society. This chapter discusses how to make such projects successful. It identifies the factors that organisers of such projects perceive as stimulating and is thus intended to help other project organisers to choose the right approach for own projects. It relies mainly on interviews with practitioners responsible for six Erasmus+ projects within the framework of the EU Youth Dialogue that targeted young people in different rural regions with a socialist past.Footnote 1 The interviews were conducted within the framework of the Leipzig Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence between May and July 2022. The study treats the interviewees as experts in their field who often have long experience with such projects, and thus are able to identify success factors and challenges.

The chapter is organised as follows: The next section outlines the subject of interest and the methodology in greater detail. Afterwards, we examine dialogue projects in terms of success factors for participation and empowerment. In the fourth section, we further discuss the findings and compare the suggestions made by the project practitioners with the criteria that the EU applies for selecting projects for funding. The chapter concludes with a short summary and suggestions for further research.

2 Successfully Enhancing Youth Participation: Approach and Methodology

In the context of our project, participation means political and social participation, especially in making one’s voice heard in matters that are directly related to one’s own social group. Political participation usually involves taking part in elections or active party membership, thus actions intended and able to influence the formation of the public will, political decision-making or the implementation of public matters. Social participation is realised through access to public life and being organised (formally or informally) in groups to represent one’s own interests. To delineate participation from other forms of public involvement, Nanz and Fritsche (2012, p. 13) exclude “information events with a participatory touch or procedures involving interest groups, lobbyists, or professional experts”, as well as “plan interpretations to which citizens, associations, and authorities can submit comments, objections, concerns, or suggestions” (own translation).

EU youth dialogue projects do not aim to directly influence EU (or national) politics. Instead, they intend to enhance the ability to do so. In other words, they are “activities outside formal education and training that encourage, foster, and facilitate young people’s participation in Europe’s democratic life at local, regional, national, and European level” (European Commission 2022). “Supported activities should help the participants strengthen their personal, social, citizenship, and digital competences and become active European citizens.” They shall, for example, “provide young people with opportunities to engage and learn to participate in civic society”; “raise young people’s awareness about European common values and fundamental rights and contribute to the European integration process, including through contribution to the achievement of one or more of the EU Youth Goals” or “bring together young people and decision makers at local, regional, national, and transnational level” (ibid.).

The European Commission, when deciding upon applications for funding, measures the potential success of a project based on a set of “award criteria”. They include how much the projects fit the programme’s aims, but also how inclusive they are for young people from different backgrounds, to what extent young people are involved in all phases of the activities or how appropriate the measures aimed at disseminating the outcomes of the project within and outside the participating organisations, are, to name but a few (ibid.).

This conception of success is a particular one, based on the rationale of the EU and its approach to public funding. This is reflected, inter alia, by the fact that the organisation of partisan political events, the statutory meetings of organisations, or the networks of organisations may not be supported although they are, from a purely academic point of view, important arenas of participation (e.g. Armingeon 2006; Badescu and Neller 2006). Another example of the particularity of the approach is that the physical infrastructure is not funded and that funding is limited to a maximum of 24 months, although many practitioners and experts in the field of informal education argue that sustainable measures to enhance participation need a certain infrastructure and permanent networks and organisational structures (e.g. Kleist and Weiberg 2022; Alke 2015; p. 223 in Möller 2014).

To use a particular definition of success to derive eligibility criteria is legitimate. Academic approaches to capture successful participation do also vary significantly, depending on the disciplinary interests. Political science analyses, for example, are often based on ideas concerning democracy and legitimacy. Varying normative assumptions about a ‘good democracy’ then imply varying models of “good citizens” participation (see p. 146 in Mayne and Geißel 2018), resulting in different ideas on how youth projects could best enhance “good participation”. While according to liberal approaches (e.g. Easton 1979; Schumpeter 1942), the projects should primarily increase young people’s ability to identify their interests and to promote them, if necessary, via the established channels of representative electoral democracy, this would not be the case for models of participatory democracy (Barber 2003; Bobbio and Bellamy 1987), which require a much higher degree and different forms of participation. For them, successful projects to enhance participation would need to increase the intellectual and rhetorical capacities of young people and their inclination to participate in a maximum of processes at a local, national, and European level. Citizens’ participation with a high legitimacy would also require high efficacy, accountability, transparency, inclusiveness, and an openness to the procedures of participation (see p.7 in Schmidt 2013). Thus, one can expect that with different conceptions of successful participation, the conceptions of factors guaranteeing the success of a project aimed at enhancing participation also vary.

In our research, we were interested in what the project organisers themselves identified as factors for successfully conducting youth projects to enhance participation and EU citizenship. As experts in their field, they are familiar with the intricacies, i.e. the challenges, the framework conditions, and the practices of EU-related participatory youth projects. Research on such projects thus depends on their expertise. To learn from their expertise, we conducted qualitative interviews. Interviewing experts and practitioners is a common instrument to gather data in fields where participatory observation would run the risk of influencing the observation and where questionnaires would not leave enough room for exploration. When interpreting the interviews, however, one needs to keep in mind that they do not guaranteerepresent a completely neutral observation and evaluation of the projects. Practitioners, while valued as experts, may have vested interests, like legitimising and securing their own work. They also might have internalised the criteria that the EU, as the main funder, uses to evaluate youth projects (consciously or unconsciously), or they might follow their implicit personal ideas of what makes projects successful instead of observing and evaluating their work on an objective basis. At the same time, interviews with project organisers are the best instrument available for systematically collecting the extensive knowledge of the experts.

Pooling perceptions and experiences from experts working on different projects operating with different methods is a suitable approach to analysing success factors in the field of youth participation if the projects and their context conditions are not too distinct. A similar approach was, for example, used by Schelbe et al. (2015) or by Kränzl-Nagl and Zartler (2010). In our case, the selected projects share important features (dealing with EU issues, targeting youth living at least partly in rural areas of post-socialist regions). To keep a linkage to the EU’s own approach, we decided to choose youth dialogue projects which had successfully undergone EU checks and were accepted for funding in 2019.Footnote 2 Thus, in a sense, they fall within the spectrum of cases that in the view of the EU are potentially successful projects and do not represent the whole universe of theoretically possible youth projects. As metropolitan regions often have a very strong influence on EU policies anyway, we deliberately chose locations far away from metropolitan centres. Since the number of such youth dialogue projects in our main region of interest (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania) was very limited at least in 2019 and two project organisations did not respond to our invitation for an interviewFootnote 3, we decided to include projects from Latvia and Eastern Germany in our sample, which are also post-socialist areas and share typical context conditions.

The interviews were conducted online and individually with representatives from each project organisation. In several cases, they were no longer active in the organisation and thus do not represent the organisation’s interests officially. The interviews were semi-structured with a number of questions concerning the projects’ success and other issues, which were put flexibly according to the answers of the interviewees. The interviews started with a part in which the interviewees spoke about themselves and the organisation, then covered practical questions regarding the projects, and ended with a reflection part inviting the interviewees to speak about success factors and challenges. The interviews were conducted in English by two interviewers each, documented, and transcribed. Based on the interviews and additional research, detailed project reports were prepared (see Chaps. 11–16).

An analysis of the success factors presented in the next section was conducted inductively with categories emerging during the analysis process. Besides, the order of the analysis reflects the relevance that the interviewees themselves gave to the different issues.

3 Key Factors for Successful Youth Participation

Table 1 summarises the success factors mentioned by the interviewees. The left column indicates the youth dialogue project for which the interviewee was part of the organisation team. The right column contains what the interviewees mentioned as being important for the success of the project.

Table 1 Mentioned success factors for youth dialogue projects
Full size table

Although the examined projects differed regarding contents, method and place, the project organisers mentioned overlapping sets of success factors. First and foremost, the tailoring of the dialogue projects for the target audience was highlighted in all six cases. This was perceived as crucial for keeping the participants’ motivation to engage at a high level. It can be achieved by involving young people in the project work, as most interviewees said. Showing the participants that their voice is heard by inviting local decision makers is a way most, but not all, project organisers took advantage of. Connecting the European and the national or regional levels, supporting a transnational perspective, and working in an organisation team with experienced staff were important factors for the success of some of the projects too. Less often mentioned factors were being part of an established network and the creation of an empowering discussion environment.

Some of these success factors have a general character and seem to be valid for different kinds of project work, like aligning topics and methods with a target audience or working in an experienced organisation team. Other factors are rather specific to these kinds of youth projects, like linking the European to the local level. In the following, we summarise how the project organisers have outlined the factors. We start with the success factors that most of them mentioned and continue with those that were mentioned less often.

3.1 Adapting Methods and Topics to a Respective Target Group

All project organisers argued that it is necessary to tailor the covered topics and the methodological framework to a targeted audience. For example, the German project focused on young teenagers that were 13 years old or older. The organisers argued that it would have been difficult to confront the young participants with sophisticated knowledge of institutions and policy making in the EU. Therefore, they promoted issues that may be the most relevant for their age level. In order to give them a better idea of the EU’s importance for their own living environment, the project took advantage of gamification strategies. Tools for everyday use were playfully connected to European politics. Similarly, the interviewee for the Hungarian project (un)Attractive? II stated that participation projects should deal primarily with young people’s living environment and values to arouse interest in European topics.

The Latvian project organiser of The Best Is Yet to Come stressed the fact that not only the participants’ age but the experience of the young people with political processes should be considered. Even though the numbers are not large, there are young people already involved in rural development or volunteering for other political purposes. These people often have extensive knowledge about EU institutions or political decision making. Projects like the Decide on Europe project from Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which addressed secondary school students, had to find a compromise between the different levels of experience of the students involved in the project. According to the project organisers, the increasing diversity of participants makes it more difficult to create a format that is appealing to everyone. Nevertheless, customising the methods and treated issues of a dialogue project plays an important role in the planning stage and seems to be a crucial factor for the success of a dialogue project.

3.2 Involving the Participants in Organisational Issues

According to several project organisers, it is not easy to find relevant topics that match the needs of the young people, especially when the organisers are much older than the young participants. Therefore, another often-mentioned success factor for youth dialogue projects is the serious involvement of the target group before, during, and after the participation process. This ensures that the focus on the target group, as expressed above, can be fully realised, and does not remain a meaningless phrase. For the Polish organisers of the European Youth Week and the Mińsk Youth Forum, this meant to organise the dialogue in such a way that almost the entire project is from young people for young people. If good supervision is guaranteed, interviewees argued, young people will handle even demanding tasks like budgeting in a responsible way. Not only does the dialogue project benefit from their commitment, but the young people themselves get the opportunity to achieve new skills and knowledge while taking part in the planning phase. It is important to give them confidence and trust so they can develop a sense of responsibility on their own.

The organisers of the Latvian project stressed that the involvement of young people in all stages of the organisational process requires guidance from experienced colleagues who are willing to share their knowledge. In the Hungarian and East-German cases, the young participants were not involved in the earlier stages of the process but played a role in the evaluation afterwards. Nevertheless, their experiences with the benefits of involving the (former) participants are similar. The German project organisers mentioned that young people should not be confronted with too many involvement possibilities as there are some participants who, depending on their age and workload in school, could be overwhelmed (cf. Unstable Motivation of Young People in Chap. 10). Still one can easily see great commonalities across the projects when it comes to the positive aspects of integrating young people into the project work.

3.3 Making the Voice of the Youth Be Heard

To achieve a discussion where all dialogue partners are willing to play an active role, it is necessary to encourage them to share their opinions. Therefore, besides involving participants early in the planning process and thus making the project for them as interesting as possible, it is important to show that the voice of the participants is also heard outside the organised project discussions. Due to the lack of institutional structures which channel the concerns of young people directly into political processes, most of the examined projects integrated dialogues with local decision makers into the project itself to ensure that the views of the young people find their way into the political sphere. Participants were intended to feel heard when talking to officials who were honestly interested in their viewpoints.

Our interviewees from projects like Decide on Europe and Mińsk Youth Forum reported that the participants felt encouraged when they spoke to decision makers because they had the impression that their voices counted. The interviewees argued that for young people, elected officials often feel to be out of reach. They are convinced that dialogue projects have the potential to change that by bringing officials and young people together. Positive experiences were made, especially when local politicians were invited. They are responsible most directly for the living conditions of the young people and share the same regional background. Thus, there are no or low cultural or language barriers that could hinder profound debates.

However, involving politicians is not always possible or useful. The organisers of the Hungarian project did not include meetings with politicians but instead tried to focus on enabling an open exchange of opinions without any hierarchy in the discussion. Especially in Hungary, where there is great skepticism among politicians towards EU politics, this was the main concern. In the German case, the dialogue project included dialogues with decision makers, but the interviewees pointed out that the participants did not feel heard by them. According to their observations, the politicians tended to answer valid questions vaguely and evasively, which further enhanced an already existing distrust in politicians (cf. Missing Framework for Consequences of Youth Dialogue Participation in Chap. 10 in this volume).

3.4 Linkages Between the European and the Local Level

According to the interviewed project organisers, another parameter particularly important for dialogue projects regarding EU citizenship in rural areas is an emphasis on the connection between the European and the local level. Even though some of the portrayed projects had a transnational approach, they all tried to make linkages between the national and EU levels visible. This was made in different forms.

The Czech and Slovakian Decide on Europe project focused on local topics and connected them to EU topics later to “offer an added value”. To show that the EU is not far from one’s personal life but has an impact on everybody in Europe, regional issues were seen as a good starting point and to move on from there to the European level. The Polish European Youth Week had a similar approach. The organisers emphasised that there are greater possibilities for young people when they can shape their actual environment (e.g. with their claims about a local night bus) instead of discussing European issues on a theoretical basis. The latter could demotivate young participants. The German project used a game to promote the learning process about linkages between European and everyday issues. The Polish Youth Forum also dealt with local topics while highlighting the connection to EU values like equality, diversity, and democracy—values that are also important in local policy making. At best, the EU can appear as an ally for young people when their concerns are not heard in national politics. With this respect, the interviewee related to the Polish government’s way of dealing with climate change.

Lastly, the project organisers explicitly considered it as an advantage to invite local decision makers to EU-related projects and no “big names” from EU institutions. As already mentioned, they argued that when an official has a personal connection to the country or region where the young people live, they can identify with him or her.

3.5 Supporting Transnational Perspectives

In addition to the local focus of most youth participation projects, the transnational perspective, i.e. horizontal linkages across EU member states, was frequently mentioned as another success factor. While the Czech and Slovakian projects and the Latvian project The Best Is Yet to Come were the only cross-border ventures in our sample, they and the Polish organisers of the European Youth Week emphasised the importance of projects beyond country borders (e.g. exchanges and field trips). The Latvian project organiser argued that it is important to recognise that across different countries there are similar experiences with political issues (especially in rural areas across post-socialist countries). These structural problems occur in several EU member states, and once you realise that there are similarities, it lays the foundation for a European strategy to solve those problems. Secondly, several interviewees theorised that a transnational exchange helps to understand different cultures and their various ways of dealing with the same issue. On the one hand, this can increase mutual respect in the Union, while on the other hand, this creates the possibility of learning from each other’s coping strategies. Thirdly, they argued that as a positive side effect of transnational activities, one can gain intercultural competences like a cosmopolitan attitude, the ability to adapt to different situations, and appropriate language skills. Those are essential skills for active EU citizenship.

3.6 Experienced Organisation Team

Interviewees often mentioned that successful participation projects require an organisational team that has both experience and expertise in establishing dialogue projects. Several of the examined projects had already taken place twice or more (albeit in slightly changing forms), which means that organisers constantly learned and applied their new knowledge in the following project. According to the Youth Forum organisers from Poland, experienced staff not only increases the chance for successful projects but also makes the planning stage more efficient. The Polish interviewee for the European Youth Week highlighted the fact that experienced actors have better access to information and relevant partners and suggested that new project members be trained by the more experienced staff. In doing so, the whole team can benefit from one single member. According to the organisers of the Czech and Slovakian project Decide on Europe, projects significantly benefit from experience because it increases their ability to adapt the project to changing political developments, to use new innovative dialogue methods, and to quickly change funding options when necessary.

3.7 Established Networks

Strongly connected to the organisers’ experience level is the extent to which the organisation is embedded in established networks. The interviewees often argued that such a network is crucial for a successful project. In some regions, like the Czech Republic and Slovakia, where support for EU-related projects by schools is not the rule, networks were seen as essential for establishing the project and reaching the targeted individuals (cf. Reaching Those Who Should Be Trained in Chap. 10 in this volume). According to both Polish projects, it is also a lot easier to receive sufficient funding when the project is surrounded by a solid network. Being known in a region was also said to help to save time while organising participation projects. While in big cities there are a lot of NGOs and initiatives for political education and participation, the infrastructure for civil engagement in rural areas often is less developed. This means that in areas where this infrastructure is most needed, it is particularly difficult to establish projects. Supra-regional networks can play an important role here.

3.8 Providing an Empowering Discussion Environment

Creating a room where young people can openly express their views and needs when it comes to discussing topics was also mentioned as being important. That includes an environment that promotes deliberative processes among participants with different views and helps people to advocate their beliefs in the presence of others. However, the interviewees did not elaborate on how exactly to create such a discussion environment. The organisers of the Czech and Slovakian participation project stated that it was important to offer students pressure-free education. Instead of school stress, they were merely guided through the project. This was perceived as a key factor for encouraging young people to express themselves, since political opinion-forming cannot be achieved by force. To encourage the participation of even shy participants, small discussion groups were formed. The organisers had the impression that students had no fear of speaking in these small groups.

4 Discussion of the Success Factors

As mentioned, all examined projects aimed at strengthening the participation of young people. The success factors identified are to a large extent a response to the challenges in rural areas (cf. Chap. 2 and Chap. 10). The contextual conditions are characterised by a low interest in politics, underdeveloped youth work, challenging living conditions, a lack of prior knowledge, and unstable motivation. Adapting the dialogue formats as much as possible to the target group, involving the young people in the organising process, as well as arousing their interest in the EU through local issues, can be understood as ways of dealing with these difficult contextual conditions. Some success factors that the interviewees mentioned are similar to observations made in the mentioned study of other Erasmus+ youth dialogue projects (Fennes and Gadinger 2021). Others, however, go beyond them, e.g. networking between project organisers and linking the national and European levels. Some are also mentioned in scholarly literature.

For example, political science has long been concerned with the concept of self-efficacy and its influence on political behaviour (cf. Madsen 1987), since it is known to increase political participation (see pp. 1013 in Caprara et al. 2009). Therefore, it is particularly important to show participants that their voice is heard. However, it is also important not to abuse this feeling of self-empowerment. Care should be taken to ensure that the participants’ opinions have an impact on politics or politicians. Otherwise, it is merely staged participation (see p. 23 in Nanz and Fritsche 2012). Since the present projects primarily used discussions with decision makers to transfer participants’ thoughts and results into the political sphere (apart from one exception in which a final document was written), it is difficult to measure the influence of these encounters. There is not enough information available to conclude that the projects have led to a political outcome (see also Chap. 10). Therefore, projects should make it transparent that they are dialogue formats and not participation forums. At most, they fulfil the purpose of consultation.

The 2021 European Parliament Youth Survey shows that while only 15% of the European citizens between sixteen and thirty have a negative image of the EU (see p. 52 in 2021), only 29% think they have (at least some) influence on European politics. This number increases up to 44% when it comes to influencing politics in a local area (ibid, p. 14). It is not a new finding that people feel more influential the closer the sphere of governance is. But it shows the necessity of the EU reaching out actively to young people and that local issues and European politics are interrelated. Obviously, this does not mean that people necessarily must deal with complex European policies. As the interviewees declared, local circumstances often can be transferred to other regions in the Union. Many local aspects (like clean drinking water) or struggles have a European dimension. It is the task of the politicians consulted to pass on the concerns of young people and, if necessary, to advocate for them at a local, national, or European level.

As the projects studied were part of the Erasmus+ funding, it is of particular interest to compare the success factors mentioned by the interviewees with the award criteria applied by the European Commission to select project applications for funding (European Commission 2022). The Commission’s criteria are very much in line with what the interviewees mentioned as being relevant for the success of such projects. Inter alia, the focus of the methods and topics on the target group, which was underlined as being important by all interviewees, is also a criterion for the EU project selection: “The consistency between identified needs, project objectives, the participant profiles, and activities proposed [...]” should be checked by the project evaluators, the Commission says. Furthermore, our interviewees declared the involvement of the target group in all stages of the project work as being relevant. This fits the EU award criterion as to the “extent to which young people are involved in all phases of the activities”. Also, the strong suggestion of practitioners to give participants a voice and train them to express their ideas is mirrored by the EU selection criteria which include the “[...] potential impact of the project [...] outside the organisations and individuals directly participating in the project, at local, regional, national, and/or European or global level.”

Other suggestions by the interviewed practitioners, namely, the linking of European and local levels or the support of a transnational perspective, are not part of the award criteria, but are indirectly covered by the requirement to deal in the projects with issues related to the overall programme outline of the Erasmus+ dialogues. Whether the organising team is experienced is also not explicitly mentioned as a criterion, thus providing an even access for experienced organisations and project newcomers. In fact, the inclusion of newcomer organisations is evaluated positively. The interviewees mentioned also established networks as an important success factor. In the EU selection criteria, this idea is covered by the criterion the “quality of the cooperation and communication between [...] participating organisations, as well as with other relevant stakeholders”. An encouraging discussion environment, which was also mentioned by the practitioners, is covered by the EU award criteria the “appropriateness of the participative learning methods proposed [...]” and the “extent to which the project makes use of alternative, innovative, and smart forms of youth participation [...]”.

In summary, many of the success factors identified by the practitioners are reflected in the EU award criteria. This is a good sign for the suitability of the EU approach. The overlap might also mirror the adaptation of the EU funding beneficiaries’ views (or statements) to the funding criteria, which, however, would also be in the EU’s interest. Despite the mentioned overlaps, the EU criteria have a stronger focus on evaluation, the documentation of results, and sustainability in comparison to the success factors mentioned by the interviewed practitioners.

5 Conclusion and Outlook

Starting from the observation that participation in general and youth participation in East Central Europe in particular face problems, this chapter has aimed at identifying those factors that organisers of EU youth dialogue projects perceive as success factors for their projects. It first sketched out what kind of participation the EU supports with its Erasmus+ programme and argued that identifying success factors is not an “objective” task, but depends on the ideal models of participation and democracy. The approach in this study was to measure inductively what project organisers, as experts in their field, regard as success factors for youth projects.

With regard to fostering active participation, it became clear that a strong thematic focus on a target group is of great importance. At best, the target group should be involved in the planning process. Furthermore, it seems relevant to show the participants that their involvement is not in vain. It should be made clear that their voice is also heard outside the project environment. In addition, a strong link between the local and the European level is important to arouse interest in European issues among the young participants. The promotion of transnational perspectives can also be helpful. Finally, an experienced organisation team, extensive networking, and creating an encouraging discussion environment for the participants are named as factors for successful dialogue projects.

As mentioned before, these considerations are based on the individual perceptions of the project organisers. They mirror the expertise and experience of the interviewees but may be influenced by their subjective impressions, adaptations to the funders’ expectations, or rational calculations. For further research on (perceptions of) success factors of youth dialogue projects in the EU, it would be helpful to focus on certain aspects in more detail or to systematically compare the project organisers’ views with the views of the participants. Moreover, additional project evaluations based on a larger sample and additional data for standardised indicators, including context factors like types of settlements or budgets, would be helpful. Finally, it would be interesting to systematically analyse if participation in youth dialogue projects increases the use of citizen rights like the right to participation (in elections or beyond) in a sustainable way.