Despite the fact that numerous political and research documents on all forms of youth participation exist, including examples of good practices, it is relatively difficult to keep track of the state of affairs with regard to reflections and discussions on the subject. That’s why the topic of youth participation is one of the key priorities for 2014-2016 of the EU-CoE youth partnership. In 2014 a group of experts from diverse backgrounds was invited to pursue the reflection on youth participation. The work of this reflection group on youth participation was based on the results of a preparatory expert group meeting that took place in April 2014 in Brussels. The notes of this meeting can found here.

Based on the discussions during in this preparatory meeting, for the reflection group the EU-CoE youth partnership contracted a number of experts to draft analytical papers on the subjects: “Why youth participation?”, “What is youth participation?” and “How is participation learned?”. The call for these analytical papers can be found here.

The draft analytical papers were discussed in the meeting of the reflection group on 30 June – to 2 July.

The agenda and list of participants of the reflection group can found here:

• draft agenda;
• draft list of participants;
• concept paper.

Following the discussions during the reflection group  the analytical papers have been revised, they can be found here:

• "Why youth participation" by Sladjana Petkovic and Manfred Zentner
• "What is youth participation" by Geoffrey Pleyers and Nadine Karbach
• "How is participation learned?" by Matina Magkou and Maria Paschou

The discussions of the expert group were documented in an executive summary and in a full report.

The discussions were also taken as a basis for a paper on youth participation which proposes a number of conclusions and recommendations to policy and practice 'Revisiting youth participation to meet current challenges' (see list below).