[ Young Europe ]

From the Seventies, in Italy and in other European Countries, young people have become the addressee of particular changes, aimed to promote and give value to their contribution in the society. The aim of these changes is the young person himself, according to age groups, but also young people who gather in various forms of associations with their ideas and opinions, that must be considered for all the decisions involving them. Towards the end of the Seventies, the first examples of National Youth Politics were disclosed until the year 1985, which was declared  the International Year of Youth.
The echoes of this declaration came to rise in the local and national interest in Youth Politics. Also the value of Associations as a main form of young people’s important activities in society was underlined. However, the EU role in matter of youth is quite poorly visible until the end of the Eighties. Only in 1993, with the Maastricht Treaty, the international cooperation in European Youth Politics becomes an EU action area.
Above all, articles 149 and 150 in the European Union Treaty  define common competences in matter of Instruction, Training and non formal Education.      In 1989 the European Committee promotes its Communitarian Action Program for Youth, called Youth for Europe. The Program finances activities of intercultural youth exchanges through 12 Countries of the former European Community, with the aim to encourage young people to dialogue about topics of their interest, according to a project invented and put into action by them, involving people from different countries.
The program should have ended after three years, but at its concluding period, thanks to the risen interest and the educational value of the projects directly organized by young people, it was re-introduced and re-financed for another three years .
In 1995 the communitarian programs called Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci became operative with a five years program called Youth for Europe starts its third five years length phase. All the programs have an increment in the countries where they have been developed so the financings grow too.  In 1996, the European Committee introduced the European Voluntary Service with the aim of giving value to the intercultural experiences of the young people through voluntary service activities of medium and long term, with benefits for the local communities. In 1999, at the end of the closing date of all the programs, the European Union strengthened its investment on youth and renewed the programs for 6 years in matters such as training, schooling and non formal education. The Youth Program became, in this way, until 2006, a new program simply called Youth which, together with Socrates and Leonardo da Vinci, has been a very important step in the world of European Actions for young people.

The new communitarian programming (2007/2013), following the wake of the former successes, re-starts initiatives for young people with a new program called Youth in Action.