VAGUETOPIC

ARTICLES

An unclear dilemma

THE ECI- A GUIDE

Under Scrutiny

OLCAY SOYALAN: DYF’S TURKISH CHAIR OF SEDE;

FIRST ISSUE#DYF14

A DREAM OR A REALITY?

Europe’s lost generation

THE ELEVENTH YEAR

CONTRIBUTORS

IVANA BIGA (RS)

MATEU TOMI (ES)

SEZEN DENIZ-TOKADAM (TR)

KONSTANTINA ROMPESI (GR)

ORIOL ROCHE (ES)

MILICA NEKTAR-IJEVIC (RS)

Dear delegates,

We are very pleased to welcome you to the Danube Youth Forum 2014 held in the beautiful Balkan city of Belgrade. First off, we (the editorial team) would like to introduce ourselves. The team is comprised of Co-nall (IE), Lia (AT) and David (AT). After hours of planning, skyping and traveling we are delighted to provide you with our first issue of Vague- the Danube Youth Forums hottest publication!

Now, we’re sure you have questions regarding the choice of title and theme for our papers. Vague was a collaborative effort, and basing our design on Vogue, we hoped to encapsulate the need for style and class at this ses-sion. Vogue represents the forefront of fashion in the world today and we thought this idea of a creative, ever-changing industry truly fit with the en-ergy and passion we hope to see at the session. However, given that we are a media team and not fashion designers we tried to VAGUELY get as close as we could. Our aim is to provide a blend of high academic content and wit-ty banter to compliment what already promises to be an amazing session.

With this in mind we aim to produce three publications in total, one print-ed and two available online. With the help of our lovely journalists (and David the video-editor) we want to capture all of the sights and sounds DYF has to offer. So sit back, pour yourself a beer and take a peak at what Vague media team has to offer!

Cheers,

Lia & Conall

Session Editors

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THE ELEVENTH YEAR

UNDER SCRUTINY

AN UNCLEAR DILEMMA

A DREAM OR A REALI-

TY?

A GUIDE TO THE ECI

EUROPES LOST GENER-

ATION

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AN UNCLEAR DILEMMA

By Mateu Tomi (ES)

The European Union stands for democracy, human rights,

equality and peace. For 20 years it has tried to unite all of Europe in a peaceful community that gains from the pacifistic relations that are established between its Member States. However, as a body with such influence and political power, the EU should not be stripped of all its defences. This is where the irony of the topic reveals itself: a peaceful entity that seeks military capabilities to defend itself.

There are many views on this mat-ter: Germany1 and France typically seek a common European defence, whilst other Member States look for more autonomy when it comes to the control they have over their own military. A common view amongst various Member States is that the EU is too dependent on NATO, and therefore on the US. This does

not mean however that they desire a common standing army, which would in turn diminish Member State’s autonomy over their own armies.

Regardless of what approach the EU takes, it should be ready to counter military offensives as soon as possible. It is undeniable that the

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recent events in eastern Ukraine and Crimea have changed the situation drastically2; just last year, war seemed something distant, something that only occurred in the Middle East and Africa. Now, it’s right on our doorstep.

The EU is currently unequipped to face such a threat, with two main issues to solve: its defence is deeply fragmented and it barely has enough funds to maintain its upkeep. That means that welding the EU’s mil-itary together and expanding it is currently impossible. Furthermore, receiving additional funds isn’t as simple as investing a bit more of the GDP into the military; the men-talities and opinions of individual Member States must also change. Most of the Member States –if not all- are convinced that the era of war is over. Sadly, other countries, such

as Russia, are fronting aggressive for-eign policies which are at odds with that of most Member States.

Obviously, military prowess is not the only weapon in our arsenal. The EU is a very powerful diplomatic entity, and should use this capabil-ity to the fullest. Being a peaceful organisation, its first priority should be seeking solutions through diplo-macy and open dialogue. The EU has many diplomatic tools at its fin-gertips, such as economic sanctions or other methods that can be used to make a diplomatic offensive against a certain country.

When it comes to any crisis in which the EU plays a part, priority should be placed on finding a peaceful, rational solution. Adopting a hostile position from the beginning would be detrimental to the outcome of

any situation, as some countries- such as aforementioned Russia- pose the threat of retaliation. In my opin-ion, the topic question isn’t about whether the EU should take a more military-friendly stance on issues, but rather what it can do to improve its military capabilities.

As with all large political entities, the EU is in a fragile position. It cannot continue with a fragmented and crippled defence, but its options are limited by external factors and its own Member States.

Should the EU give up any military ambitions? Or should it become more aggressive? How should it coordinate manoeuvres among its Member States? The next steps to take are for SEDE to decide.

1Glover, Peter C. Merkel’s standing army: more than a paper tiger? Retrieved from http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/727/merkels-european-army-more-than-a-pa-per-tiger.2Weitz, Richard. NATO must adapt to counter Russia’s next-generation warfare. Retrieved from http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13976/nato-must-adapt-to-count-er-russia-s-next-generation-warfare.

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A DREAM OR A REALITY?

By Konstantina Rompesi (GR)

Despite being one of the small-est continents, Europe is the

home to roughly 50 countries. Achieving the balance of preserved European unity and individual national identity is one of great im-portance. Through schemes such as the “European Youth Capital City” opportunities for cultural expres-sion are offered to member states, providing a platform for the pro-motion of their customs and values. In many ways the EU is like puzzle, requiring many colourful pieces to make a picture.

The extent to which we should sacrifice our national identity for a wider European one has been a matter of debate. Many sociolo-gists support the need for a Eu-ropean consciousness, built upon the common beliefs, ideals and attitudes of citizens in its member states. A wide range of laws have already been passed that apply to all member-states. What is less well known is that overlap also exists be-tween many individual states’ laws suggesting an already established platform of concurrent ideologies.

On a lighter note, the EU also has its own anthem which is shared by all member states and played at all European events. Although this suggests a promising future for common identity, many important issues still need addressing to make this a reality.When we talk about a European cultural identity, we are talking about common moral standards and principles in addition to our na-tional and regional identities. Many components contribute to the for-mation of an identity. Specifically, we must focus on both the histori-cal and the contemporary identities of each member state in order to understand the root of their culture. Historical identity can be consid-ered as the relationship between past significant socio-cultural, nat-ural and economic events and the current beliefs, attitudes and values of a country. With reference to Eu-rope, major events like the Balkan wars and the second world wide war have drastically shaped and defined many European countries with the lasting effects evident even today.

While historical identities may seem divided at first glance many overlap-ping relationships existed between countries. So while Scandinavians have dramatically different cultural systems to those of the Mediterra-nean nations of Balkans, overlap exists dating back to Viking times

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with commercial and economic relationships uniting these diversely different regions. Taking into consid-eration all the above facts it is clear that European civilisations despite their differences share a connected past.

An identity can also be consid-ered contemporary which means it reflects the style of daily life. Although each European nation is different from one another not only in language but also in tempera-ment, similar attitudes reflect clearly in citizens’ decisions to often settle within Europe as opposed to other continents.

In addition, we must consider some countries as bridges between dif-ferent regions. It’s easy to see that central Europe (Czech Republic and Poland) has a vastly different cultural framework to that of Scandinavia.

But countries such as Latvia and Lithuania share common bonds with both these groups. They represent a bridge between these regions, not only due to their position on the map but also because of their cultur-al ideology in which the influences of both areas can be seen. So, the concept of common European iden-tity may not be so unachievable.

The next question is whether this dream can become a reality with-out the loss of individual national identities. We can think of it as having your own identity card for use at a national level, whilst also having a European passport open-ing doors to every European city. In this way euroscepticism may be reduced and European institutions may have the freedom and support to employ more large scale EU wide policy. That doesn’t mean in any case that discussions will necessarily push

towards the creation of a Europe-an army. Cultural communication between nations shouldn’t be used to benefit military invasions. This would be a step further away from a stable European partnership.All in all, it is obvious that the tools are there to make a common Euro-pean Cultural Identity a reality its simply a case of using them.

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A GUIDE TO THE ECI

Democracy is the belief in freedom and equality between

people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves. Keeping in mind that the EU, which is based on the principles of democracy, is a union of 28 countries, it is very hard to directly involve citizens in policy making. Despite this, the EU is continually striving to create more ways of bringing its citizens closer to the creation of legislation.

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is the EU’s foremost instrument of direct democracy and the first of its kind in a transnational context. Introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, it has been in use from April 1st 2012. It offers an effective method for involving citizens in the democratic process of the EU but, unfortunately, is far from perfect. The EU currently has limited means of funding the ECI which makes

its goal very difficult. Funding could be sourced either from the EU or citizens themselves although the latter option leads to many other issues. In every society there are inequalities. Whether through income, education or interest in public affairs the reality of Europe is far from ideal. It could be argued that even though the ECI’s goal is to represent all groups in a complex society it could easily be manipulated to suit the interests of the more privileged .

by Milica Nektarijevic (RS)

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In some Member States it is a requirement that citizens submit their identity card numbers along with details of their place and data of birth for inclusion in the ECI. However, due again to a lack of funding this information is susceptible to misuse given that many countries provide minimal security for this information . This leaves the citizens who participate in the ECI rather unprotected.

A second issue that requires addressing is the number of participants needed to cite real change. Taking into account that the combined population of all member states, excluding Croatia which joined the EU in 2013, was 503,679,730 on January 1st 2012, are the 1 million currently participating citizens enough to have a significant impact on policy change? Given also, that collecting

these 1 million signatures was a tough job.

The aim of ECI was to give the citizens the same level of political inclusion as both the Council and the European Parliament. It was designed to establish direct contact with the institutions and provide a medium through which to highlight issues that are relevant to citizens. But, when it comes to measuring awareness of the ‘’citizens initiative ’’ in the general population, this statistic seems very low. The question to be addressed is how better to introduced the ECI to the average citizen, and to do so in a cost effective manor.

Should the citizens’ initiative manage to overcome all the obstacles and reach a level where its voice is noticed by the Commission there are two possible outcomes. One being

the adaptation of legislative proposal and other being that of ignorance.

Unfortunately the Commission is not obliged to act on the opinion of the ECI despite its representation of citizens opinion. In the latter, some might find themselves asking what more can be done? How can a guarantee be made to the people who participate in the ECI that their voice will have any kind of impact, considering that final say is given to the European Committee? I don’t know, but what I am sure of is that such initiatives are worth striving towards, and all efforts should be made for it to continue.

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THE ELEVENTH YEAR

European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is a foreign relations instrument of the European Union (EU), aimed at building relations and fostering structural transformation in neighbouring countries. ENP participation constitutes a bilateral agreement between the EU and the individual country as each partner presents a unique set of issues and circumstances to deal with. In return the EU offers its neighbours a privileged relationship with benefits such as trade opportunities and financial assistance. Although all of the recognised candidate countries in the current enlargement agenda are also neighbours of EU, none of them are involved in the ENP which is aimed at countries that are unlikely to join the EU in the foreseeable future. Due to its function as a substitute for full membership to the EU, ENP members are not only neighbours of Europe but of candidate countries that are likely to

join the EU in the future.

Eleven years since its launch the ENP critics claim that it does not work the way it should, with minimal incentives for countries that do not have a wish to join EU and the absence of the carrot of future membership which frustrates those who do intend applying for membership someday. The ENP is also criticised for being Eurocentric, with claims of the EU insisting on conditionality in its relationship but frequently applying those conditions inconsistently and selectively. Many agree that the ENP needs to be revised, and the drastic changes in neighbouring countries over the past decade which have warped relations between the EU and its partners must be addressed.

by Sezen Deniz Tokadam (TR)

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Almost all of the 10  southern partners (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia) have been directly effected by the Arab Spring which caused the deaths of nearly 200,000 people and changed the political landscapes of these countries for ever. The government was overthrown in Libya and Tunisia. During the ongoing crisis in Egypt, after Hosni Mubarak (former  president of Egypt) was overthrow, the replacement government which took his place was also overthrown. Syria was suspended from the Arab League and the civil war is still not over.

Meanwhile the EU has been one of the key actors of  Euromaidan, a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest demanding closer

European Integration and leading to the Ukrainian Revolution of 2014 and the Crimean Crisis in the following days. During the Euromaidan Protests almost 150 people lost their lives. Ukraine remains in a state of commotion, exacerbated by the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 which was shot down by pro-Russian rebels in Ukrainian air space. 

As it stands the ENP is facing criticism from all sides for failing to function as it was planned and for lacking consideration of the recent economic and political changes in both its eastern and southern partner countries. In truth the whole project needs to be revised by the new European leadership which will take office in September 2014 and, in my opinion, EU member states

should participate more actively in revising and amending this large scale policy. Speaking realistically no major decisions can be expected until 2015 but ENP should be high on the agenda of the new EU commission.  

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EUROPE’S LOST GENERATION

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by Ivana Biga (RS)

In the Digital Age, technologi-cal transformations have led to the abundance of many previously rare resources while the limits of human skill, knowledge and talent continue to hamper economic and business development. Economic success and failure are increasingly deter-mined by the strategic utilization of economically relevant skills by both businesses and individuals.

With less experience and fewer skills than many adults, young people of-ten encounter particular difficulty accessing work. The global youth unemployment rate, which has long exceeded that of other age groups is constantly rising, reaching 23.4% in March 20131. Young people tend to face many barriers to the labour market that subsequently lower the chances of them finding a decent job. Some of these difficulties in-clude the “last in – first out” method during economic downturns, lack of experience in specific fields, path de-pendence as well as limited job op-portunities.

Without economic growth, there will never be enough jobs for young people. Governments have to play an indispensable role in ensuring a pos-itive environment for job creation and providing viable accessible em-ployability programs. In 2012, the European Commission took the first step by proposing the Youth Em-ployment Package2, which includes measures to help Member States

tackling unacceptable levels of youth unemployment and social exclusion by offering young people jobs, edu-cation and training.

The Youth Employment Package in-cludes a recommendation to Mem-ber States on introducing the Youth Guarantee Scheme3. It is a new ap-proach tackling youth unemploy-ment in the European Union by ensuring that all people under 25, whether registered with employment services or not, get a good quality of-fer within 4 months of leaving for-mal education or becoming unem-ployed. The good quality offer may include a job, traineeship or offer of continued education, and is adapted for individual’s needs and situation.

Developing and delivering this scheme requires strong coopera-tion between the stakeholders such as public authorities, employment services, career guidance providers, education & training institutions, youth support services, businesses and employers. Early intervention and implementation are the key and in many cases structural reforms are needed like improving vocational education and training systems4. To make the Youth Guarantee a reali-ty, national budgets must prioritise youth employment or they run the risk of incurring higher costs in the future.

The education-to-employment (E2E) path can be described as a road

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1 Eurostat, data up to June 2014, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics#A_deta3iled_look_at_20132 European Commission, Citizen’s summary – EU Youth Employment Package, http://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=9318&langId=en 3 European Parliament, February 26, 2014, Youth unemployment: Putting words into action, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/content/20140226STO37008/html/Youth-unemployment-putting-words-into-action4 European Commission, August 4, 2014, Vocation and education training (VET), http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/vocational-policy/index_en.htm5 McKinsey Center for Government, 2012, Education to employment: Designing the system that works, http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/public_sector/mckinsey_cen-ter_for_government/education_to_employment6 European Commission, December 5, 2012, Towards a Quality Framework on Traineeships, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52012DC0728&-from=EN7 European Commission, August 5, 2014, European Alliance for Apprenticeships, http://ec.europa.eu/education/policy/vocational-policy/alliance_en.htm8 Massimiliano Mascherini, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2012, Youth Guarantee: Experiences fromFinland and Sweden, http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2012/42/en/1/EF1242EN.pdf

with three intersections5: enroll-ing in postsecondary education, building the right skills, and find-ing a suitable job. Unfortunately, in Europe roadblocks to each of these paths are common. To facili-tate school-to-work-transitions the package also includes the coopera-tion of a consultation of European social partners on a Quality Frame-work for Traineeships6. The aim of which is to enable young people to acquire high-quality work ex-perience under safe conditions. Furthermore, it creates a Europe-an Alliance for Apprenticeships7 to improve the quality and supply of available apprenticeships by spread-ing successful schemes across the Member States and outlining ways

to reduce obstacles to mobility for young people.

Finland is a prime example of the successful implementation of Youth Guarantee Scheme. Their success is attributed to increased personalised plans for young people that have dramatically lowered unemploy-ment. A Eurofound8 evaluation re-vealed that in 2011 83.5% of young job seekers received a successful of-fer within 3 months of registering as unemployed.

On one hand, none of this would have worked without strong con-nections between the stakeholders combined with a strong desire to take a step towards helping young

people to develop their own ca-reer paths. On the other hand, we remain the lost generation. Youth unemployment will be a profound challenge for the future of Europe, and both individual countries and the European Union must recognize this.

It is my hope that this written piece will motivate action, imagination, and leadership in employers and push them to help young people realize their potential in the work-place. Employers must step forward. Employers must make a difference.

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UNDER SCRUTINY

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by Oriol Roche (ES)

We live through our social me-dia. Figuratively, of course,

but one is sometimes tempted to say literally. We are willing to share with a vast amount of people personal and sometimes even intimate informa-tion. However, things change when instead of our friends being on the receiving end of our messages it’s a bunch of spies from the NSA closely monitoring our movements online. There is something Big-Brothery about it, and that is disturbing.

Besides being unsettling to think about, mass surveillance lacks trans-parency. We knew nothing about PRISM or Tempora1 before Edward Snowden told the world about it. The standard response in defence of such secrecy is that only by being secretive surveillance will actually be effective in preventing terrorism. Nonetheless, this leaves governments in an authoritative position: they know, but citizens don’t. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Hu-man Rights, said in a recent report regarding this issue that this imposed ignorance needs to be avoided2.

This is not the only point of con-cern. For instance, there are certain loopholes3 in legislation that can be useful for governments to justify du-bious actions. Charles Farr, for ex-ample, the UK’s director general of the Office for Security and Count-er-Terrorism, issued a statement ex-plaining how governmental moni-toring of social media is permitted

by law in the Regulation of Inves-tigator Powers Act (RIPA) 20003. It was not long until some realised that the mentioned statement de-fending mass surveillance relied on unclear parts of the legal framework. Not only will the Committee on Civil Liberties have to consider the facts above, they must grapple with the core problem of whether democ-racy and surveillance can coexist or not. The European Parliament has already stated in a study on Mem-ber States’ surveillance programmes that “it is (...) the purposes and the scale of surveillance that differenti-ates democratic regimes from police states”4. In other words, what tells George Orwell’s Oceania apart from the US is the fact that the motives of the US government are ethically correct.

This statement in itself is counter-

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1 Shubber, K. 24 June 2013. “A simple guide to GCHQ’s internet surveillance programme Tempora” Wired UK. Retrieved from http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/24/gchq-tempora-101 2 18 July 2014. “Mass surveillance ‘dangerous habit’, says UN rights body” BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28367982 3 Bowcott, O. and Ball, J. 17 June 2014. “Social media mass surveillance is permitted by law, says top UK official” The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/17/mass-surveillance-social-media-permitted-uk-law-charles-farr 4 Bigo, D.; Carrera, S.; Hernanz, N.; Jeandesboz, J.; Parkin, J.; Ragazzi, F.; Scherrer, A. 2013. “National programmes for mass surveillance of personal data in EU Member States and their compatibility with EU law”. Retrieved from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2013/493032/IPOL-LIBE_ET(2013)493032_EN.pdf 5 Nicks, D. 13 January 2014. “NSA: Usefulness of mass surveillance is vastly overstated”. Retrieved from http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/13/report-useful-ness-of-nsa-mass-surveillance-overblown/

intuitive given that an institution cannot judge its own purpose. In the case of data controlling, the problem is further complicated by the lack of clear boundaries between counter-terrorism and useless gath-ering of information. One has to be cold-minded and unbiased to make a proper judgement on the matter. So no, don’t get angry at Intelli-gence services. At least, not right away. To some extent, you are safe thanks to their job. Obama said that approximately “fifty threats have been averted” thanks to PRISM et altri (despite a study from The New America Foundation saying pret-ty much the opposite)5. Whatev-er the truth is, the most poignant question is not what they have used vigilance for in the past, but rather how far are they willing to probe in

the future. Moreover, the follow-up question to ask ourselves is whether governments will ever be willing to pull the plug on such extreme data gathering.

Just think about it. A government is in charge of the lives of millions of people. Lives that can potentially be saved by peeping into their daily routines and dissecting them. Now it is harder to take a stance, isn’t it? Especially if we go back to the start-ing point and remind the reader that we, the citizens, consciously make the choice to share our pictures, opinions, and lives on a daily basis. Maybe if we didn’t share that much, or if our habits were different, this problem wouldn’t be as complicated as it is today.

Yes, mass surveillance makes us feel judged and unclothed by strangers –but don’t we feel similarly about certain Facebook friends, and are they not trying to save us from ter-rorism? We are always under scruti-ny, and do not seem to have a prob-lem with it. But now that we realise how actually public we are, and how easily controlled we can be, we are scandalised. What is it that we want then? Privacy? I am not sure that we are in any position to demand it.