Launch of the 4th European Youth Work Convention

Thank you. Thank you very much, Miriam, dear Parliamentary Secretary, Nina Emusha, colleagues and friends.

First of all, I'd like to extend really our gratitude to the Maltese authorities, Minister of Education and Youth Research and Support, for this important support in organizing not only one, but two important, very, very important events in the next months during the forthcoming presidency of Malta to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

The first, the one we'll be talking today, the fourth convention, European Youth Work Convention, which we are organizing together with the European Union every five years.

And the second one following, in October, the Conference of Specialist Ministers of Youth of all the Council of Member States, which will also take place here in Malta, and about which I've discussed with the Minister of Education this morning.

To put these two events into a context, and I cannot help myself because being in a place like this, in a country like this, in a city like Malta, and in a building like this one, where history is oozing from every stone and every corner, really, the Council of Europe celebrated 75th anniversary last year.

I mention it because you have to imagine the time when it was created, 1949, only four years after that devastating, horrible conflict.

And it was created as a reaction, of course, to that conflict, what happened, but also to the period before, marked by social turmoil, economic difficulties, people's uncertainty and fear about future, frustration about the politics and the political parties, and especially intentional, deliberate orchestration and manipulation of hatred for political purposes, which all led to that unprecedented descent into inhumanity that has caused the Holocaust, millions of dead people, and so much devastation.

So, four years after, the Council of Europe was created as a response, as a response to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

And that response was based on democracy, on human rights, on the rule of law, on the European Convention of Human Rights, which followed just a year later.

And just four years later, with the European Cultural Convention, we've had the basis to create an environment in which that new Europe would be able to function.

And an important part of that environment was work with young people, to create the necessary fabric, which is necessary for our democracies to be resilient, to be functional, to be resistant.

That fabric that is built with the values of solidarity, cooperation, empathy, inclusion, non-discrimination.

Why I'm mentioning all this is because we are living today in times which are echoing some of those experiences from the past.

And I think we have to take a lesson and find a way to bring that same response even more forcefully, even more effectively today.

And if you want to repair that fabric based on those values, I think working again with young people is essential.

And the fourth European Youth Work Conference is an ideal place to make that executive, because it's through youth work that young people are participating, engaging, contributing, working with other young people, but contributing to the broader society, practicing those very values that I have mentioned, solidarity, inclusion, non-discrimination, openness, dialogue, in all the different spheres that the youth work represents, all its richness and diversity.

So we have great expectations from this event in May.

Not just because it's going to bring significant results for the specific objective of supporting, finding additional ways to support and reinforce the conditions for youth work in Europe, but even more so because of its enormous significance for the protection of our democracies in our world today, in our Europe today.

Thank you very much.