The Federation of Young European Greens (FYEG) was founded in Belgium in 1988, with the aim of bringing together young environmental groups from all over Europe in order to to encourage both mutual understanding and mutual action for a Greener Europe.
From a modest beginning with a few Member Organisations (MOs) from both Eastern and Western Europe, the FYEG has grown quite substantially. It now has 42 MOs from all the different regions of Europe. MOs vary in size, having from 70 to thousands of members. Organisations are comprised of the youth wings of Green Parties, student unions or environmental non-governmental youth organisations (youth NGOs).
The FYEG secretariat is located in the same headquarters as the EGP, and once a year hosts its General Assembly, where MOs send delegates to decide on policy and strategy, and elect an Executive Committee. The Executive Committee board of nine people is elected to serve for a year and Executive Committee members can serve two terms consecutively. The Executive Committee leads and coordinates the activities of the Federation. There is no leadership hierarchy and we insist on having a flat structured and gender-balanced committee, although Executive Committee members do have individual areas of responsibility. They have been assisted by an elected full-time paid Secretary General. Together, they function in smaller teams to increase efficiency, but important decisions are made by the whole Executive Committee. Our opinions and statements are based on our political platform, which is discussed and updated each year during our General Assembly. By far, most our members are under 30, and all our events are planned and run by young unpaid activists from across Europe. We run a variety of activities over the span of a year with the objective of facilitating cooperation and mutual working between Member Organisations. We hold at least four major events annually which vary between meetings, seminars, study sessions, summer camps, political debates and training sessions. These are held in different parts of Europe where our members can meet, exchange views, broaden their horizons and find common cause with other Europeans, creating a real European sense of identity.
The FYEG also organises International Campaigns such as; Climate, anti-TTIP, Reclaim Your Future, Reclaim Europe!, Youth, Election campaign for the European Union Elections, etc.
Various methods are used in order to achieve our objectives. One of the most important is the spread of information. Ecosprinter is our journal which publicises our point of view and informs our activists of past and upcoming events. FYEG also have active email lists for different issues and different projects over the year. We regularly attend seminars and meetings organised by the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the European Youth Forum (of which we are full members), EGP (of which we are observers) and other partner organisations. This set-up realises FYEG's vision of empowering young people to play a part in European civil society rather than passively consuming events organised for them by adults. We want to develop a future Europe for young people and by young people with a number of opportunities to express themselves, based on environmental and social justice.
During the last few years, we focused strongly on expanding our network toward Central and Eastern Europe. This is reflected in the full membership of organisations from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine. A daughter organisation called Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe (CDN) was set up. In the future we aim to continue developing our network in the CEE region, in light of the enlargement and further European integration processes, and also focus on other networks and regions such as Euro-Med. We will also seek closer co-operation with other Green organisations outside Europe and also other international organisations.
The FYEG is a functioning and active organisation, growing and becoming more dynamic and more effective. We are reaching out to new MOs and our MOs are becoming better organised, with our support. We will carry on supporting Europe and its Green future.