Regional Youth Office Being Established

The first meeting of the Working Group for establishing the Regional Youth Office was held in Berlin from 23 to 27 November. The Working Group was formed based on the Joint Declaration for Establishing a Regional Youth Office that the Prime Ministers of six countries in the Western Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Albania, Macedonia and Monte Negro) signed on 27 august 2015 at the Conference in the Western Balkans held in Vienna. The working meeting was moderated by representatives of the Franco-German Youth Office. 

The Working Group consists of governmental representatives and organisations focusing on youth issues and the representative of the BiH organisation is Rejan Igor Roji?, the representative of the Institute for Youth Development KULT in the Committee for Coordinating Youth Issues in BiH.  

The first meeting of the Working Group focused on strengthening the team, discussing the working method of the group itself, defining the rules as well as the basic working directions for the following period. According to the adopted plan, the Working Group will organise three additional meetings by the end of its term (in Tirana, Sarajevo and Belgrade), after which it will proceed towards the final concept of regional organisation that will be offered to the signatory governments of the Declaration. 

The meetings with representatives of the Franco-German Youth Office, German-Polish Youth Office, as well as with representatives of diplomatic missions of countries involved in the process were held in order to discuss the experiences and the challenges facing the Working Group in the following period. 

On the final day of the meeting, the Working Group also reflected on the topics that will essentially be the subject of discussion from the next meeting, such as: mission, structure, financing and activities. 

The process of establishing the regional office is officially a part of the Berlin Process, and concrete results are expected by the following conference on the Western Balkans that will be organised in Paris in August 2016.