The future of youth mobility in Europe | A youth perspective on COFOE

Young people across Europe have been disproportionately affected by the Pandemic. Starting with the youngest generations: schools being closed, fewer job opportunities due to the restrictions in place and the economic and social lockdown. Youth are experiencing an unprecedented situation, and governments must ensure a fair recovery that will help young people get back on track as soon as possible.

• How can we ensure our generation is not a lost generation?
• What is the future of youth mobility in a post-Pandemic world?
• What role will youth play in the Conference on the Future of Europe?
• How to articulate the local, regional, national and European democratic participation in this participatory process?

These are just some of the probing questions we will try to answer during our event with Andrés Muñoz & Gisela Guari, from the Assembly of European Regions during our event on the 25th of February from 16:00 pm (CET).

The Assembly of European Regions (AER) is the largest independent network of regions in wider Europe, gathering regions from 35 countries – from Norway to Turkey and from Russia to Portugal. AER is present everywhere on the European continent, inside and outside the European Union.

Founded in 2020 in Brussels, the Centre for Youth and International Studies (CYIS) is a recently formed voluntary, youth-orientated and non-partisan think-tank with a strong in-house research capacity of exceptional young professionals from key inter-governmental institutions.

Our guests: 

Andrés Muñoz

Programmes Coordinator @ AER 

....has been responsible for the AER’s youth mobility, participation and intergenerational dialogue programmes since 2018. Qualified as a Political Scientist in 2014, he also holds a MA’s degree in international cooperation and development projects. He has worked as a project and policy analyst for multilateral organisations, national and regional public administrations and NGOs in the areas of development cooperation, social inclusion and regional integration. In the past, he got involved in youth platforms such as the Model OSCE or the Model European Parliament.

Gisela Guari

Institutional Relations and Advocacy Officer @ AER

...the main focus of her portfolio lay on representing the voices of its member regions by advocating for sustainable regional development on a wide range of policy topics, such as cohesion, democracy, and migration. Moreover, she supports the facilitation of the work carried out by the AER Bureau, which is the primary political voice of AER, as well as she contributes to the establishment of relations between international and European organisations.

Moderated by: 

Mathilde Cournut

Director, Economic-Environmental Dimension @ CYIS

Mathilde leads a team that produces facts and analysis on emerging economic-environmental threats to national and international security threats to drive effective policy.

With a dual master's degree between Sciences Po Paris and LSE, Mathilde has specialised in international and development economics, with a regional concentration in Africa. Her professional experiences at the OECD, DG DEVCO of the European Commission, Oxfam and the French Embassy in Cameroon gave a practical dimension to her theoretical knowledge in economics and helped her to better understand current economic trends. At the same time, her Master's degree in Political Philosophy and Ethics, with a thesis on the concept of development, allowed her not only to understand the world as it is but as it should be and to question current paradigms in order to create new ones.