Plan to extend voluntary service

Date: 23/05/1996

YOUNG people would have the chance to participate in voluntary service activities throughout the Union under a programme to be examined by EU youth ministers early next month.

The Italian presidency is keen to use the informal ministerial meeting on 6 and 7 June in northern Italy to build up support for a permanent European Voluntary Service (EVS) programme to enable young people from one EU country to work in disadvantaged neighbourhoods or rural areas in other member states.

“This is the first time ministers will discuss this. We believe it is a good idea and we hope that a proposal for an EVS programme will be adopted under the forthcoming Irish presidency,” said an Italian official.

At their meeting in Cortona, ministers will consider the early results of a 15-million-ecu pilot programme launched earlier this year. The various EU-financed projects are intended to involve 2,500 young people in six- to 12-month schemes aimed at improving the environment, providing social service and care, helping the homeless, immigrants and refugees, and supporting community arts projects.

The European Commission is already using the programme to establish various networks in Europe. One, involving researchers and scientists specialising in endangered species such as certain migratory birds and Romanian wolves, is educating a group of youngsters and offering them the possibility of becoming ecological guides. Another will send a team of young European doctors to work in rural areas of South Africa.

Youth and Training Commissioner Edith Cresson, who successfully launched the pilot programme, is keen to see it followed by a multiannual exercise in the hope that this could eventually become as successful as the Union's Erasmus student exchange scheme.

Commission officials are expected to put forward a proposal for a permanent programme this autumn. They believe the EVS would not only enable young people to work in disadvantaged areas of the Union, but would also give them valuable experience and self-confidence which would prove useful when job hunting.

They see the system as complementing existing national schemes which invariably concentrate young people's activities either within their own member states or in the developing world.

There is general support among EU governments for youth voluntary work schemes, but several want to see what practical lessons emerge from the pilot programmes before committing themselves to longer-term projects.

“We must wait and see what added value there is from a European scheme. There are a lot of technical and practical problems to be overcome. For instance, we need to look at social security, right of residence and taxation issues. These all differ from member state to state,” explained one Brussels-based official.