COUNCIL OF EUROPE

The Directorate of Youth and Sport

The Directorate of Youth and Sport is part of the Directorate General of Education, Culture and Heritage, Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe. The Directorate elaborates guidelines, programmes and legal instruments for the development of coherent and effective youth policies at local, national and European levels. It provides funding and educational support for international youth activities aiming at the promotion of youth citizenship, youth mobility and the value of human rights, democracy and cultural pluralism. It seeks to bring together and disseminate expertise and knowledge about the life situations, aspirations and ways of expression of young Europeans.

Statutory bodies　

The European Steering Committee for Youth (CDEJ) brings together representatives of ministries or bodies responsible for youth matters from the 48 States Parties to the European Cultural Convention. The CDEJ fosters co-operation between governments in the youth sector and provides a framework for comparing national youth policies, exchanging best practices and drafting standard-setting texts, e.g., Recommendation R (97) 3 on youth participation and the future of civil society or the Convention on Transnational Voluntary Service for Young People. The CDEJ also organises the Conferences of European Ministers responsible for youth and drafts legal instruments regulating youth policies in member states. (more…)

The Advisory Council on Youth comprises 30 representatives of non-governmental youth organisations and networks. It provides opinions and input from the youth NGOs on all youth sector activities and ensures that young people are involved in the Council’s other activities. The Joint Council on Youth is a co-decision body, bringing the CDEJ and the Advisory Council together. It establishes the youth sector’s priorities, objectives and budget envelopes. The Programming Committee on Youth is a co-decision body comprising 8 members each from the CDEJ and the Advisory Council. It establishes, monitors and evaluates the programmes of the European Youth Centres and of the European Youth Foundation.

The European Youth Foundation (EYF) is a fund established in 1972 by the Council of Europe to provide financial support for European youth activities. It has an annual budget of approximately 3 million Euros. Since 1972, more than 300 000 young people, aged between 15 and 30 and mostly from member states, have benefited directly from EYF-supported activities. In 2007 the EYF supported some 300 projects involving more than 15 000 young people. One of them is the current web page www.eeyouth.org.

Its purpose is to encourage co-operation among young people in Europe by providing financial support to such European youth activities which serve the promotion of peace, understanding and co-operation in a spirit of respect for the Council of Europe’s fundamental values such as human rights, democracy, tolerance and solidarity.

The EYF thus provides financial support to the following types of activity undertaken by non-governmental youth organisations or networks or by other non-governmental structures involved in areas of youth work relevant to the Council of Europe’s youth policies and work: 

• educational, social, cultural and humanitarian activities of a European character;
• activities aiming at strengthening peace and co-operation in Europe;
• activities designed to promote closer co-operation and better understanding among young people in Europe, particularly by developing the exchange of information;
• activities intended to stimulate mutual aid in Europe and in the developing countries for cultural, educational and social purposes;
• Studies, research and documentation on youth matters.