Isabelle Durant celebrates the fresh ideas young participants brought to the Agora for the EU to tackle unemployment and innovate to create new jobs.

Interview: Young people make their impact at Citizens' Agora

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/16424764/n003-0266-en.srt

Isabelle Durant, hello. You are  Vice-President of the European Parliament,

an MEP on the list  of the Belgian Ecolo Party.

You're one of the organisers,  one of the instigators,

of this great Agora for young people  to tackle unemployment.

We've heard a lot about Agoras before,  often with a focus on young people.

Is this yet another rally for young people?  -No, it's nothing like a rally.

There have been many of them  and I'm not sure they're useful.

What we're doing here,  we have 56 young people

from all the 28 countries, young men  and women, in employment or unemployed.

For two days following a strict methodology,  these young people are going to deliberate -

not in order to produce yet another  parliamentary report on youth employment -

the obstacles and the incentives are  for finding another job.

Is it a question of training, of education?

Is it family support, network,  the fact of being engaged in society?

How can you rent an apartment  when you're young?

Are you obliged to live  in shared accommodation?

shared between young people from Greece  and Finland, or Germany and Portugal.

It started earlier  when a young German said,

'I don't want to bear my country's  responsibility towards the Greeks

for the austerity  that has caused damage in Greece.'

So we have a transnational debate  between young people themselves,

and no big players giving their umpteenth  report on youth employment.

So it's an empirical, bottom-up approach.  How do you make them integrate?

Are some of them working, some not?  What's the profile of the young people?

These young people were randomly chosen.

Thousands of young people  registered on a website

and then they were chosen so that  we have young people aged 18-30 years,

men and women in equal numbers,  of course,

with relatively little training...  20% of this group left school at 15,

20% studied for one or two years  after their secondary education,

So we have a certain... not  representativeness, but different profiles.

And they have  very different life experiences,

depending whether youth employment  is going well or badly in their country.

Afterwards, their conclusions  will be put into a report which...

It's not a report. They're going to give us,  in the form of bullet points,

their solutions and recommendations  as to what we need to do.

What then? Martin Schulz will take them  to the summit in Paris on 12 November

at the invitation of Mr Hollande  and the Heads of State.

Here it will go to the Employment  and Social Affairs Committee.

but it's very important to hear  from people other than the experts

or MEPs, however good they may be on  the Youth Guarantee or Youth Employment.

We need words and solutions from young  people. That's real participatory democracy.

There are some countries where youth  unemployment is 50%, one in two people.

What ideas do you, Isabelle Durant, have  to combat this disaster?

First of all, like other people,  I bear responsibility for the fact

that in the last 15 years, especially  in recent years, we haven't been able

to work for the next generation,  but rather for ourselves.

It's unfair and not right.  We now need to put that right.

People now say, 'Young people are  individualist, selfish, not enough training.'

It's not true. Many young people  are well-trained, they want to engage,

so we need to completely revise  not only job opportunities, job offers,

but also our image of young people.  There's incredible potential in young people.

We can do lots of things in the area  of the social economy and creating jobs,

new businesses by young people  for young people.

We have to innovate.  What we've done before does not work.

You're a female politician  and also a mother.

After the political speeches you go home.

Have you advised your children  to leave Europe to go to the US or Asia,

to learn Chinese?  What advice do you give your children?

My children are here. They'll no doubt  move around in their life,

but they're here. I advise them  not to leave and to remain European.

They need to look at themselves  and their society,

and to open their horizons  to everything Europe offers.

I think they're doing that,  each in their own way.

It's the best message we can give them.  I don't say they can't move.

It can be useful to go  to the US, China or Canada,

but it's not a must. We can't tell  all our young people to leave.

They're our potential,  our collective intelligence.

I'd say they are our present and our future.

They should stay here  and learn to move in Europe,

they shouldn't have to compete  with one another.

When there's European mobility,  a Greek who goes to work in Germany

mustn't also have to compete  with young Germans.

So if we open up markets,  we open mobility to young people,

it's not to make them  compete with one another.