Committee “Culture, Education, Youth and International Cooperation” held its spring plenary in Novi Sad (Vojvodina-RS) on 26 March.

Sub-Committee Culture defined its interests mainly around the topics of cultural heritage and culture for health/seniors. The debates on culture will be pursued during this year’s Summer Academy.

The work of Sub-Committee Education was very much marked by the monitoring of the new funding instruments linked to youth mobility and youth employment, such as Erasmus+ and the FSE.

School drop-out will remain one of our top priorities. The working group “School drop-out” met on 27 March to continue the discussions on prevention measure developed in the different participating regions. In parallel to the activities of the working group, a new project application will be submitted under the current call of Erasmus+.

The political report on “Youth participation in democratic life in the regions” launched by Councillor Lilla Merabet (Alsace-FR) is finalised and will be adopted at the AER General Assembly. The report will be completed by a tool box helping to establish a youth council. The topic of this year’s Most Youth Friendly Region award (MYFER) being closely linked to the Merabet report, further good practices will be added to the toolkit.

Upon proposal of Dnipropetrovsk (UA), Committee 3 created last year a working group on the Eastern Partnership. As the situation in Ukraine remains very difficult, it has been decided to monitor the developments and to inform members regularly.