On the 22nd of March, YMCA Europe’s representative, Dragoș Tarța, commenced his activity within his new mandate as a member of the Advisory Council on Youth.
Attending the committee’s meeting, as well the meeting of the Joint Council on Youth, he championed social rights and engaged meaningfully in the policy processes that shape the lives of millions of young Europeans.
Significant strides were made on priority topics such as peace education, lowering the voting age, and expanding the European Youth Centre model, reaffirming the central role of young people in democratic life. These discussions underscore our continued commitment to ensuring that youth voices are systematically included in the development, implementation, and evaluation of policies that affect them.
Within this mandate, Dragoș leads the Access to Rights & Social Rights portfolio, focusing on strengthening the protection, promotion, and realisation of young people’s rights in all their diversity.
As a lead for this area, Dragoș delivered a substantive speech in the plenary of the Joint Council on Youth, highlighting the multiple and intersecting challenges that young people and civil society face across the continent, including gender-based violence, discrimination, precarious employment conditions, shrinking civic space, and increasing attacks on civil society organisations and human rights defenders. He outlined the need to protect young people and their spaces, both physical and online, and called for respect and progress for young people’s rights.
In a personal capacity, he was also elected to the Programming Committee on Youth, the body responsible for overseeing the implementation of the youth sector’s programme of activities and ensuring alignment with the strategic priorities set by the CCJ. Through these roles, Dragoș will contribute to making sure that the decisions taken at European level tangibly improve the lives, opportunities, and democratic participation of young people across the continent.
As one of the two pillars of the Council of Europe’s co-managed youth sector, the Advisory Council on Youth plays a central role in ensuring that young people and their organisations directly shape the policies, priorities, and standards that affect them.
It brings the perspectives, expertise, and lived realities of young people into dialogue with governments, helping to design and monitor programmes that advance human rights, democracy, and social cohesion. Through its work with the Joint Council on Youth and the Programming Committee on Youth, the Advisory Council on Youth helps to guarantee that institutional decisions remain firmly grounded in the needs, aspirations, and rights of young Europeans.
