Young MEPs for European Democracy

The project “Young MEPs for European Democracy” will simulate a working session of the European Parliament. For seven days, 74 young people between 18 and 30 years from six different European countries will experience the European parliamentary democracy discussing the key issue of social inclusion: how can the EU strengthen its fight against poverty and unemployment, as the EU2020 Strategy states? How the European Parliament can improve young people's European mobility?
Through a seven days working session, the young MEPs will draft a final resolution on the topic basing their activity through real documents and statistics about Europe's social inclusion.
“Young MEPs European Democracy” encourages young people's involvement as European active citizens. Overall, keeping the 2014 European Parliament elections in mind, the project aims to foster the young people's participation to democracy through the operational knowledge of a component of the European institutional triangle. Through a vote at the end of the simulation, two young participants from each country will visit the renewed European Parliament in June 2014.
The European Parliament simulation will take place in Jelgava from the 20th until the 29th of March 2014 and will be hosted by the project applicant, the Latvijas Lauksaimniecības Universitāte (Latvian University of Agriculture).

Objectives:
- To strengthen European young people's participation in European Parliament elections (May 2014);
- To enhance European young people's knowledge of the functioning and competences of the European Parliament;
- To enable young people to learn about European democratic life;
- To enable young people to feel close to the key topic of social inclusion in the EU member states.

Activities
The project foresees 7 steps:

1. Criteria and redaction of the form
The partners will state the selection criteria in order to choose the participants to the project.

2. Selection of participants
Under the coordination of LLU, all partners will work for advertising the project in their own websites and medias, prepare and launch the call for applications, select the participants, publish/communicate results.

3. MEPs Incubators: on the road for democracy
LLU and the other partners involved in the project will organize a February 3-days non-formal MEPs Incubators, designed to prepare efficiently the Young Delegates. Each sending organization will provide for its own course according to a shared platform.

4. Parliament Simulation
The 74 Participants are expected to arrive at LLU. Each participant will represent a country and a political group. After the election of the president, which will take place the first day, participants will discuss the EU 2020 Strategy with respect to the topic of social inclusion. At the end of the simulation, Parliament will draft and vote a resolution or more resolutions.

5. Nice to meet you Latvia!
Students Assembly of LLU – helped by PM Unit - will provide a number of activities involving foreign participants out of the simulation time, such as international dinners, visits to town and its administrative bodies, visit to protected natural areas.

6. Visit to the European Parliament
A selected group of the young MEPs will visit the European institutions and notably once the simulation took place. During their visit, the young delegation will be part of a debate about the European youth, assessing their ideas and their needs with a representative of the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth.

7. Evaluation and dissemination
One organization will make its Web Platform available for any publication related to the project as a parallel page will be created to host video, photo and written contents from the event. A permanent discussion on European social issues on a web-blog will be opened.

8. Project Management
The Project Unit of LLU will follow all activities that may concern Project Management, being in contact with partners and with the National Agency from the beginning till the end of the project implementation.
In order to facilitate work, all partners will be asked for skype conferences.