Have you ever met your political representative? And if so, did you just shake hands or actually have a meaningful discussion? When politicians interact with young citizens, it needs to be more than a photo op. Politicians should take the time to listen to the worries of young people and discuss possible solutions to the most important issues. And communication shouldn’t stop after the meeting. But how can we follow up on the ideas we discussed and find out what has come of them?
Update: The outcomes are now online!
Loes Rutten was the president of AEGEE-Europe until August 2018, where she represented the borderless vision of the AEGEE network towards European Institutions and several civil society platforms in Brussels. Before becoming president, she was supporting the development of local branches in the AEGEE network and took part in the European Citizen’s Initiative ‘Move than Education’ which aimed to put Civic Education higher on the European Agenda. She was initiator of the campaign ‘Think before you Vink’, encouraging young people to inform themselves and to vote during the EU-Ukraine association agreement referendum in the Netherlands, and also enjoyed the cultural diversity that the AEGEE network has to offer from the Canary Islands to Siberia. Loes also completed a masters’ degree in Geophysics at the University of Utrecht.
Brando Benifei, European Federalist, is one of the youngest MEPs and is from La Spezia, Italy. His main fields of legislative work in the EP are Employment and social affairs and Foreign affairs. He is co-chair of the Youth Intergroup and vice-chair of the Disability Intergroup. Among his parliamentary activities in the Committee of Employment and Social Affairs, he is currently Rapporteur for the European Solidarity Corps and was responsible for key legislative and non-legislative reports on the social inclusion and integration of refugees into the EU labour market; youth employment policy such as the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative; digitalisation and rights of persons with disabilities.
Terry Reintke, born in 1987, was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2014. She belongs to the Greens/EFA Group and is the youngest female Member of the European Parliament. She is a strong supporter of youth rights and pushes for a stronger social dimension of the European Union. She was born and raised in Gelsenkirchen and studied political science in Berlin and Edinburgh. She started getting interested in politics at the age of 16 and became an activist of the Young Greens shortly afterwards. Before becoming a Member of the European Parliament, Terry was the spokesperson of the Federation of Young European Greens. Photo credit: © Cornelis Gollhardt