JEF Belgium needs you!
JEF Belgium is a growing and dynamic organisation operating in an increasingly complex environment. In order to enable its executive board to achieve the strategic goals it set for itself for the mandate 2012-2013, JEF Belgium is looking for two motivated young people that want to apply for a position as co-opted board members.
Candidates should send an application email containing their name, address, language and short motivation (in Nederlands, Français or English) to belgium@jef.eu
On its executive board meeting of 22 April 2012, JEF Belgium decided to co-opt two board members for the positions of co-opted political secretary and co-opted membership officer.
Co-opted political secretary
The co-opted political secretary works together with the elected political secretary of JEF Belgium, supporting him in multiple projects that are targeted at increasing the visibility of JEF Belgium by actively building, promoting and spreading our idea for a federal Europe by
- Writing resolutions containing JEF Belgium’s political message, to be proposed at JEF Europe Federal Committee Meetings
- Gathering ideas and proposals concerning European issues from JEF Belgium members and from discussions in the media or other societal platforms, and use these to write articles and opinion pieces for blogs, news websites, …
- Following up on other interesting (youth) political initiatives
Co-opted membership officer
The co-opted membership officer works in close cooperation with the Secretary-General and the local section officer of JEF Belgium in order to develop, propose and implement a strategy for membership management and growth in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia.
UPDATE: deadline for application is Sunday, the 27th of May at 18.00h.
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
thanks for caring,
Peter Oomsels
President
Young European Federalists Belgium
Europe Day, a day of celebration ! or ?
Since the Summit of Milan in 1985, The European Union celebrates its fundamental values of peace and solidarity on the 9th of May. Right after World War II, French Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert Schuman, claimed on this day in 1950 the historical necessity to create a supranational European Institution for the coal and steel industry in order to avoid another devastating war. Certainly at that time, this industry could be seen as the basis of all military power. Schuman was convinced that “by pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries, this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace.” (more…)
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JEF Paris seminar 2012: youth, participate!
Sports, social work, scouts, political organisations, volunteering work… We have a wide range of choice to participate in society. Still some choose not to do so. Why do they not participate? How can we motivate these people? And the youth that participates, why do they choose to participate in a certain organisation? What does raise their interest? We have had enough food for thought before the seminar.
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European Ombudsman gathers European top in order to start winning back citizens’ trust
Today’s tumultuous times are indisputably an enormous challenge for everyone involved in politics. This is true for every policy level, but is even more so for the European Union. Even before the financial crisis (firstly) and the budget crisis (secondly) had hit home, the E.U. had a difficult time in profiling itself as a force for good to – and gaining the trust of – its half a billion constituents. Since the crisis’s the E.U. has had more media coverage, the negative connotation surrounding that attention, however, didn’t boost the public image. To the contrary. The trust and confidence in the European Union and its institutions has never been this low.
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Giving Kosovo’s youth a viable future beyond the scars of the past
‘Yours truly’ was present on the 5th March 2012 at the conference ‘Sustainable Kosovo’ organized by ThinkYoung (a Brussels-based advocacy NGO for young people), in collaboration with the European Stability Initiative and the Robert Bosch Foundation. Four noteworthy speakers shared their views and analysis with the audience: Mrs. Ulrike Lunacek MEP, Mrs. Doris Pack MEP, Kosovo’s Ambassador to Belgium Illir Dugolli and the General-Secretary of ESI, Mrs Alexandra Stiglmayer. (more…)
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Dreams of a fEUture @ Berlin!
From 15 to 18 March the annual international seminar in Berlin took place. Since the European crises is still not resolved, JEFfers from all over Europe took a look into the European future to propose a federalist vision for our European house. From JEF Belgium Sarah Dejaegher and Mathias Maertens were present to enjoy the journey with JEF Airlines to the year 2050. Take a look at some ideas for the future in the video below:
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19/03 Free Belarus Action – Belgium: Jeffers in Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, Louvain-la-Neuve and Leuven hit the road !
On the night of 18-19 March 2012, the Young European Federalists (JEF-Europe) will organize a coordinated pan-European “Free Belarus Action” in many cities throughout the continent to show support for the suppressed Belarusian civil society and opposition movement. The last action in 2010 took place simultaneously in more than 100 cities all over the globe but the call for fair and democratic elections went unheard. (more…)
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ImpACT your world – the story behind the communications conference in Armenia.
Arriving after long travelling from 13 different countries around Europe, we had the chance to see the center of Yerevan before heading to the mountainous town of Dilijan. First impressions were of a gray communist country with poor infrastructure, as the holes in the roads were making our cab from the airport to the city shake and us jumping up and down on the back seat. As if to compensate the poor first impressions, The Republic Square in the city center, meant to resemble a traditional Armenian rug from above, was making you feel warmness and was grabbing you with its beauty in each direction you look at. The pedestrian valley near to it, as if to prove the discrepancy with the communist past, was full of fancy shops and posh cars passing through. (more…)
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Helsinki- Fixing a hole- closing the gaps in democracy
On the 22th of October, together with another bunch of Jeffers coming from Brussels, I arrived in Helsinki of what’s going to be my first seminar EVER: Helsinki 2011: “Closing the Gaps in democracy”. Being in JEF for almost 3 years now, I couldn’t postpone my baptism any longer, so I had to go on this one fine trip, and I was excited. I experienced a week full of interesting talks, inspiring presentations, met a lot of passionate people while in meantime enjoying some fine Finnish sight-and culture- seeing.
On the airport we were warmly greeted by someone of the organization and after a little ride, we arrived at what’s going to be our permanent residence for the next of the week: Omena Hotel. A next generation budget hotel, without any staff or reception but with automatic doors and entrance codes. It seemed like we were thrown forth in time, more as the one hour we had to change on our watches due to changing time zones. Moreover, so was told us, the weather was pretty sunny for the time of the year in contrast to the rather gray and dull weather Helsinki is famous for during winter: this was already promising of what would follow!
Getting started.
After some acclimatization the group was expected in our first venue, the building of SITRA in Helsinki, an independent policy innovation think tank, established with Nokia shares the government held (http://www.sitra.fi/en ) in the start-up years. What followed was a hell of a busy week, in which we saw almost every corner of Helsinki, because the program was set up in such a way that every activity was organized on another venue. Although this was some pretty nice organizing, it was tiring as well, but in the meantime we had the opportunity to explore and discover the capital to the fullest.
The week took off with the most interesting part. An analysis in which state our democracies are right now. We tried to capture the umbrella concept that democracy is and after formulating the challenges our democracies were confronted with, we were expected to came up with proper solutions of how to tackle these issues.
We got the chance to get inspired by some interesting key note speakers who were doing their research about the state of Finish democracy and how it could live up to the challenges of the 21st century, like the social media revolution. The key point was, that our society was already in the post-information age, but the democracy was still lagging behind somewhere between industrial age and information age and this has its consequences in its proper workings.
In the rest of the week, we would tackle the other threats of democracy as well: nationalism, populism, racism, unemployment. On a more personal note, I was a little bit disappointed that there was not much coverage of the link between democracy and the current financial crisis, but the huge amount of other topics that were discussed during the week completely made up for it.
Fixing the Holes !
From thereon, the program was gradually built up in such a way that each day the “topic of the day” shifted up one place higher on the political level ladder: from the local level – over the national level- to the global level. The third day we visited Porvoo, a traditional Finnish city nearby Helsinki which had one of the oldest historical centers. This day was all about local democracy and youth participation at a municipal level.
The day after, the focus turned to the national level. An interesting debate between the youth presidents of the biggest Finnish political parties and they realized pretty soon they were speaking in front of a bunch of federalists, leaving their populist, national arguments quickly behind. Well, the debate was vividly at least. Next, the political trip led us to the European level where we went some more in depth of the contemporary social and political challenges European politics is confronted with nowadays and ended the last day with a simulation of the United nations about the Djibouti-Ethiopian border conflict.
All these intellectual efforts were off course alternated with the necessary coffee breaks and snacks. So indeed, we were rather surprised by the huge pile of sandwiches sometimes waiting, after the workshops, presentations and flipcharts. Especially in Finland, where the price of sandwiches is almost inversely proportional with its length, we unanimously appreciated this gentle gesture of the organization. Thumps up!
And as the evening starts, things got even more exciting. The seminar-tradition prescribes at least one International Evening, and so it happened. When having the opportunity to present our own countries with its most delicious traditional snacks and sips, Belgian jenever seemed still pretty popular abroad. No surprise. Other evenings we went out to show off our dancing skills, get to know the other people better or look forward to the next day . Another evening worth mentioning was the traditional Finnish evening which implied to eat, to drink and to sing at the same time. I leave this up to your imagination, but it was far by pretty, indeed..
Wrapping up
All in all, this first seminar was a very enriching experience, leaving me completely exhausted in the end of the week, but it was totally worth it. We visited the Finnish Parliament, Helsinki town hall, The student house, youth centers and a newly built university campus.
Besides being home to Santa Clause, reindeers and 2 million sauna’s, Finland as a country also convinced me. This country knows really well how to invest in what it should foster the most: her own future, the youth. But keeping that one thing back in mind, it was the great sense of belonging that stroke me most during the week. From Belarus, to UK, from Sweden to Malta, although 25 different nationalities and opinions, JEF Seminars are a great get-together of young Europeans, with the same mindset and beliefs about Europe. And as we are the future, we must spread out that belief!
Discursive migration policies in Europe: Filling gaps against a dynamic current
Migration issues are possibly the most painstaking agenda items that any nation across Europe is facing at the moment.
With a global financial and labour-market crisis on our hands, along with elevated tensions in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc., the stream of migrants trying to make way to a more prosperous and stable labour and living environment is swelling.
The most vivid examples being the stream of Libyan refugees trying to find a safe haven in Algeria and the stranded migrants and refugees on the Italian isle of Lampedusa. In all this commotion and insecurity in going through legal channels to move to another country, well organized criminals are purging thousands of people annually container and trucking companies, often intimidated their families to pay well or not see the end of the voyage through.
Even though asylum and migration policies are traditionally regarded to belong to the sovereign decision-making authority of the Member States, the European Union has moved the past four years to leverage the disparities and provide useful assistance.
Aside from the FRONTEX agency, which operates as a supervising and operational body that coordinates security efforts, and monitors and
disseminates information aimed at combating illegal immigration, the EU installed the novice European Asylum Support Office (EASO) to cooperate with Member States about their policies and procedures (and interpretation thereof) regarding asylum.
This EU ‘regulatory agency’ (currently 31 such agencies exist), was devised under the Spanish Council Presidency and its operational Regulation was signed in May 2010. Based in Malta, it shall work closely with the national authorities responsible for asylum, the European Commission, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The establishment of EASO, succeeding the The Hague Programme for a Common European Asylum policy and the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum (Autumn 2008), indicates that Member States seek aid by institutionally ‘formatting’ the asylum and migration challenges they face. That all sounds pretty formal and nice, but what has changed on the ground meanwhile? Indeed, the financial crisis is putting strain also on the departments dealing with migration, border control, regularisation and crime-fighting (against the human trafficking networks).
The fragmentation of competencies and vast range of well implemented actions required at the EU institutional level also manifests itself in the field of practical cooperation, as current policy and counselling activities on asylum are carried out via two distinct frameworks.
A first initiative called the EURASIL working group, consisting of Commission experts discussing and sharing best practices among member states through regular meetings. EASO has been expected to take over the activities of EURASIL once fully operational, and the agency is tasked with the systematic set-up and improvement of the Common Country-of-Origin Information Portal (COI). This common working database is especially important to detect misuse of asylum procedures (f.i. fraudulent practices with duplicate applications) and to fuse and share migration intelligence for relevant border and (under circumstances yet to be laid down) law enforcement agencies. In this respect, EASO shall beef up the software infrastructure to enable more expedient and practical information exchange of data on asylum applications among Member States and other collaborating states.
Secondly, there’s a particular international (thus broader) network in which a number of EU member states take the lead via specific asylum-related projects. The GDISC network, short for General Directors of Immigration Services throughout Europe (active since 2004 and involving 33 member Immigration Services from the 27 EU Member States and also Turkey, Macedonia, Croatia, Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland) and the European Migration Network (EMN) are examples hereof.
With this being said, it’s easy to recognize that even on the EU level, the instruments remain very intergovernmental, piecemeal and stop short of a truly comprehensive approach. In short: all supernational and cross-border authorities remain fragmented and a bit ‘legally isolated’ along the spectrum. What is duly required here, is a thorough conflation of systemic guidelines and administrative but humane regulation mechanisms, in full compliance with the European Charter of Human Rights.
The author in question in fact foresees six required steps (or criteria) to be taken to realize a durable solution to the dynamic challenges imposed on the European Member States. Stay tuned, as I will elaborate these further in an article which will be released soon.
(of course, new comments on this article or others are quite welcome !)
- Nico Segers
[ Political Secretary - JEF Belgium]
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