The doors of the European Youth Center opened to welcome the participants of the 25-th Advisory Council on Youth (AC on Youth) meeting that took place from 14th to 16th April 2011 in the heart of business Europe - Strasbourg.

To begin with, let me say some words about what the AC on Youth is. It is a body in the structure of the Directorate on Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe that consists of 30 young people of which 20 are elected from the pillar of the European Youth Forum and the other 10 are appointed by the Secretary General of the CoE for 3 years term. The AC on Youth is entitled to discuss important youth matters within the CoE and together with governmental representatives (in this case the whole decision-making body is refereed to as 'Joint Council') make decisions on them. That is why the AC on Youth is often referred to as ‘co-management' in the youth sector of the CoE.

The main points drafted in an agenda of the meeting included such important issues as the Council of Europe Secretary General's report on ongoing reforms within the CoE, Ministerial conference 2012 to be held in St. Petersburg, reports of Directorate of Youth and Sport and Programming Committee, progress reports on some projects and many other interesting topics.

A great deal of attention was drawn by a meeting taking place on the first day: the participants enjoyed the opportunity of asking questions directly to initiator and manager of ongoing reform within the CoE - current Secretary General of the Council of Europe Mr. Thorbjorn Jagland. A number of questions put to Mr. Jagland were reduced mainly to the major concern of all attendees regarding the role of co-management mechanism which is reserved for it in the framework of the carried out reform. The answer received from the eminent guest seemed encouraging since Mr. Jagland ensured the participants that the ongoing and forthcoming reforms would for sure keep the significant role of co-management system which it had played so far. Among the other topics which seem interesting and important to me, were the following: foremost the issue of an actively debated Convention on Youth Rights draft and also the issue of bringing in some amendments to the category D of the European Youth Foundation (EYF), that is 'Pilot Project'.

In regard to the topic of priorities provided in the category D of the EYF, there were many discussions as for whether to add one more priority aimed at maintaining civil society in Belarus, or the priority shall simply be incorporated into already existing one tackling the same issue in Russia and Turkey. The Joint Council made a conclusion to go for the second option.

Finally, as for the topic of the European Convention on Youth Rights, the AC members had another opportunity to contribute to the process splitting up into smaller groups and afterwards sharing the results of discussion with a specially invited member of the Parliamentary Assembly group dealing with the issue.

The meeting left very positive overall impression though one might have wished some topics to be paid a bit more attention and some questions to be answered a bit more precisely. Hopefully, all those will be replied at the next and last meeting of the AC on Youth of the current mandate, which is scheduled for mid October 2011.

Kyrylo Ivliev
YEE External Relations Officer