Youth4Cooperation: the future of cooperation

• Between 900 to 1000 young people (around 300 for each beneficiary) will be consulted all over Europe (the group of young people consulted must be a balanced group in terms of gender, place of origin and age);
• Awareness about Interreg, MRS and Cohesion policy will be raised among and through young people;
• Through social media and communication tools a wide pool of European citizens will be reached and informed about territorial cooperation in its various shapes;
• The 30 recommendations (10 for each beneficiary) will have a meaningful impact on the preparation of the post 2027 framework for territorial cooperation.

With the use of social media, communication campaigns, surveys and consultation meetings/workshops, the expected results include reaching a wide audience of young people all over Europe to collect and understand their views, opinions and suggestions towards the next Cohesion Policy and in particular the future Interreg/territorial cooperation post 2027. The young people consulted might be already knowledgeable about cooperation/interreg/macro-regional strategies (MRS) but not all; the action will have to include also the consultation of youth interested in knowing more about the European cooperation world. The outcomes of the action will then be considered and implemented in the wider consultation on Interreg/MRS post-2027.

This call for proposals has the objective of selecting three beneficiaries which will secure the involvement of young people as a horizontal priority in territorial cooperation within Cohesion Policy. The inclusion of young people in the consultations will help shaping the post 2027, to make sure that youth voices and needs are fully taken into consideration in the next programming period 2028-2034. The voices of young people will be a positive and valuable addition to the reflection on the next for territorial cooperation.

The activities that can be funded are scoped to the main objective of consulting young people coming from, but not only, youth councils and other bodies working closely with the 4 EU macro-regional strategies. The results of the consultation will be collected in a final report including 10 meaningful recommendations for the post-2027 framework on territorial cooperation. To achieve this, the selected beneficiaries will be able to use the Toolkit developed by DG REGIO and publicly accessible on Inforegio, which contains advice and tips, as well as an indicative list of questions and a reporting template.