Youth Centres and the Naked Island

Your Royal Highness Minister, dear friends. First of all, I'd like to thank our hosts for welcoming us here in this fantastic setting, this youth centre. I'd like to thank you all for being here. I'd like to thank the Luxembourg Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council for a fantastic six months during which they have really focused on, you know, democracy.

At least all the areas of work for which the Director for Democracy, the Council Europe, that I'm responsible for, is working on culture, education, media freedom, and of course, now, young people.

I would also like to thank the teams here, the one in Luxembourg, to prepare this event, led by Georges Metz, and also, of course, our Council of Europe team, led by Gordano Berian and Marcos Andrade.

Now, I'd like to start with my personal first experience with youth work and youth centres of a sort. Now, as you can see, I can no longer qualify as a young person.

I haven't for a while, but I was young once, and I was young in a country that no longer exists.

And we had youth centres, we had youth work of a sort, even if the whole thing was, how shall I call it, semi-spontaneous, you know, regimes like the one in Yugoslavia and similar ones was very big on young people.

It was not very big on young people, always in the way that young people would want or appreciate, but it was, you know, giving a lot of attention to young people.

So we had youth work, mostly it was physical work, and we even had uniforms, and volunteerism was almost compulsory.

But I became quite skilled in evading this kind of volunteerism, because I was never a big fan of uniforms of any kind.

But finally, it caught up with me, or I succumbed to temptation, because it was about building a youth centre on an island in the Adriatic Sea.

So who could resist six, no, four weeks of sea, hard work, and sun.

So I spent that summer there, and, you know, with all and everything that I said about it, it still was a great time.

Because I felt that magic, even in those circumstances, I felt that magic, that spark that happens when you bring young people together from, you know, different backgrounds, different paths, different languages, different experiences, and bring them there, and something happens.

That magic really happens.

So, and then I said to myself, so, you know, so what?

And I'm doing something that is going to serve young people for many years to come in this beautiful setting.

So recently, I looked up what happened with that, the island of young people, the island of youth.

It turns out that it's not a youth centre.

It has been released to some company agency from France, Italy, Germany, I don't know, which is organising adult-themed camping tours on that island now.

I don't know exactly what adult-themed camping is about.

It's probably like Disney-themed camping just without Mickey Mouse.

But, and I have nothing against it.

I just, you know, think there is symbolism somewhere there, even if I don't dare explore it in every detail.

You know, and they had another island just north of there where, you know, they could put their adults in camping.

It was there, it's bare.

If it wasn't for its sinister past, because there used to be a very harsh prison camp on that island in the 50s, where my uncle spent three years in his 20s, thousand days and thousand nights, as he called his book where he described his time there.

But, you know, it's there, it's available, you know, and it even has the name to go with the adult-themed camping place, because it's completely deprived of any vegetation.

It's called the Naked Island.

But no, they had to take our youth centre away.

What I'm trying to say that in today's world, you know, we have nothing against adult-themed campings, but what we really need is what our democracies need, what young people need, is more youth centres.

Places where young people can come together, can learn together, can learn about each other, can learn about democracy and practice democracy.

Because there has been many recent opinion polls, there have been researches, there have been election results, which have caused a lot of concern, and with reason about the tendencies in young people's preferences when it comes to voting and elections and political parties.

And there is a marked tendency to veer away from democratic parties towards more extremist ideas.

We have seen that now in almost every election.

Now, to be fair, it's not all black and white.

I've recently had an honour to, together with the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, to welcome in the youth centre in Strasbourg, the group of Serbian students who came on bicycles from Novi Sad, from Serbia, to present their requests, their demands, their expectations with regard to the situation in Serbia.

And, you know, I was really humbled.

I was so impressed by their determination, how articulate they were, how passionate they were, how nevertheless non-aggressive they were, but determined in their expectations that, you know, are completely aligned with what we think and want from all our countries and governments, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

But even those young people who are having doubts, you know, who are embracing alternative ideas, to put it mildly, of course, we can, you know, we can condemn, we should definitely be concerned, but we could also ask ourselves why and try to understand why they feel as they feel, why they vote as they vote.

And I don't think these young people are lost for democracy forever.

I think they're angry.

I think they feel left behind.

I think they feel ignored.

I think they lost confidence.

So we need to do something to restore that conference.

Actually, I think we need to do a lot to restore that conference.

Because regaining confidence in democracy requires regaining confidence in the future.

And you will not do that with words alone.

So you're gaining confidence in the future is about education.

It's about employment.

It's about housing.

It's about health.

It's about environment.

It's about peace.

You know, people, young people, everyone, we need, how shall I say, material evidence of democracy as a system that can deliver on people's expectations if you want to restore that confidence in democracy.

And restoring confidence in democracy also requires spaces, requires infrastructures.

It requires spaces where young people can feel that magic that I felt so many years ago.

Because democracy cannot be learned and practiced on mobile apps alone.

And this is what youth centers do.

And this is what quality youth centers do very well, very well, what they do best.

Because they offer safe spaces for democratic youth participation, non-formal education, skill building, engaging young people in democratic human rights, social inclusion.

Quality in quality label is not just a word, as you all know.

It is a result of passion and hard work and investment by people believing in young people and in democracy.

By people like you, by you.

Quality label requires hard work to be earned.

And it requires hard work to be kept.

That is what makes it so impactful, so relevant, so respected.

Quality label, quality work with young people, for young people, also requires attention and recognition.

And this is why your presence here, Your Royal Highness, today is so important, is so precious.

Quality label in youth work also requires investment and support.

And this is why the role of local and regional authorities, of governments, of local communities, associations, of European organizations is so important.

Because quality label youth centers provides us a path towards more confidence in democracy, a path towards more democracy, and a path towards a better democracy, a path towards a world where there may be some adult youth, adult theme camping places, I don't know, but there will be many, many more youth centers, spaces for young people, and no naked islands at all.

Thank you.