breaking the ice

The Austrian Government decided to hold the European Youth Event in health resorts for pensioners. So I am spending 2 days youth event in Oberlaa, a part of Vienna and 2 days in Bad Ischl, the summer residence of our former emperors.
So far the seminar is going quite well. I am in the working group on youth and jobs. There are some really interesting and some really conflictual discussions. We try to focus not only on how to combat youth unemployment but also on the quality of jobs for young people. It is a quite huge discussion and many issues of cross-sectorial policy making are addressed such as education, training, social services and welfare.
From tomorrow on the youth event will merge with the informal youth ministers’ conference and the young people will have joint working groups with the ministers.
Till then we have to come up with a declaration of the youth event… lets see how this is going.