With this article we inaugurate the EPI Talks column on L’Europeista, realised in collaboration with Europa per l’Italia.
A space for dialogue and in-depth analysis on European issues, designed to bring young people closer to Europe and promote participation, ideas and experiences to build its future.

The moment to act

There is a moment in the history of every generation when observing is no longer enough. It is the moment when one chooses to act, to expose oneself, to build. For Europe, that moment is now and it passes, inevitably, through the courage of its young people.

The birth of Europa for Italy

Europe for Italy was born from the desire of 9 young people who feel Italian in Europe and European in Italy: the desire to offer accurate information on the values of the European Union, the guarantees, protections and services it offers, and to reach the youngest so that they can rediscover a European identity through active participation.

It was born from a choral courage, that of committing oneself to something that, at the time of its establishment, was bigger than those young people could have imagined. It was 2020, we were between 20 and 24 years old, an age that makes you believe that anything is possible, even founding a European association from scratch in the heart of Italy, in Rome.

Little did we know that shortly thereafter, Europe and the entire world would find themselves on their knees facing a pandemic. In this we recognise a kind of punctuality of fate: if we had waited even a few days, we might not have made that leap. How fortunate to have believed in it!

The Europe for Schools Project

Our ideas had to wait over a year before we found spaces to breathe and come to life. We only had social media – like everyone else, after all – to communicate and make ourselves known, but that was not enough to achieve our goal. To really reach other young people like us, we needed to meet looks, ideas and to recognise ourselves through them. We needed the first place where individual thinking begins to nurture the desire to find its own direction and questions the various “why?”: school.

Europe for Schools was the idea, even before being a project, that drove our minds to found the Europa per l’Italia Association: to fill the gaps that we ourselves had experienced. The lack of European civic education, the difficulty of understanding what Europe could do for us and what we young people can do for Europe.

From theory to practice

Europe is often described as a distant idea, we decided to live it concretely. We started from the ‘Gian Battista Vico’ linguistic high school in a small town in the province of L’Aquila, Sulmona: our first real testing ground. We had to understand whether that project could really work as we had imagined and remodelled it for years, after the gruelling wait for the end of the pandemic restrictions.

It included three days of in-depth discussions on topical issues from a European perspective, followed by a concluding day in which the students had the opportunity to be protagonists in a debate on the issues addressed. They became bearers of ideas, proposals and solutions.

The enthusiasm of those newly eighteen-year-olds was the answer we had been looking for for years, the project was working and we knew we couldn’t stop there and, in fact, we haven’t stopped since that day!

The courage to have believed

Ours has become a small European network on the move, consisting of training projects, intercultural dialogues and European information campaigns. The success of the Europe for Schools project made us realise that we could push harder.

Even more ideas, even more schools, even more young people.

The approach of the European Parliament elections was a valuable opportunity to expand the project: to bring a simulation of how the electoral system works into schools, addressing not only the fifth grade classes, but also – and especially – the fourth grade classes, which were just a step away from the first vote.

An increasingly ambitious project

A high school in Florence, the ‘G. Salvemini – E.F. Duca D’Aosta’, responded to our appeal by fully embracing the project, this time articulated in three days of training on the Italian and European electoral system, flanked by focuses on highly topical central themes: the environment, cybersecurity, immigration and European mobility for students. To conclude, a real competition, the ‘project team competition’.

It was a more ambitious project, we were aware of this, and a larger and more appropriate space was needed to hold the competition. The lecture hall of the lycée provided the perfect setting for the students who had the courage to argue the case for their positions in debate, writing down in black and white solutions and receiving the prize for the best submission.

Shared growth

The association had grown over the years and those of us, myself included, who got on that train to Florence came back changed. The students and professors thanked us for our deep commitment to the project, but the truth is that we were the ones who felt deeply grateful to those students for having believed in it so much. We found in their eyes the same curiosity, grit and determination that we had when we decided to found the Association and that we continue to preserve and defend. It was at that moment that we really understood: we were doing something big and important. We had to continue.

The future of our Europe

Europe for Italy has believed from the very beginning in a Europe of connections. The numerous projects realised since 2020 – often together with other young associations – have become our bridges.

From the participation in the ‘Youth Plan 2021’ to the ‘Festival of Sustainable Development’, from the ‘Generational States’ to the ‘Re-Constituting’ Festival (2021-2024), to ‘CASA EUROPA – the Congress of Europeanists’. The collaborations with the “Talking Intern”, events such as the “Let’s Talk Youth and Parties”, the winning of the “Erasmus 2021” call for tenders with the project GAP – Young Activists for Participation, the podcast “Mothers of Europe” and the column “EpiTech. These are just some of the stages of a constantly evolving path.

A shared responsibility

But every milestone achieved has opened up a new question: where can we go from here?

Europe for Schools has taught us that young people are not only looking for information: they are looking for tools to understand, to choose, to participate and to reach an ever higher level of critical awareness. All this deserves even more space today and we want to find it in academic circles, where study becomes the antidote to disinformation and a space for the authentic search for truth.

Today, I see Europe for Italy as that space that allowed young people in their twenties to shape their ideas, to live them and to continue to imagine new ones.

In this column within The Europeista we have added a new piece: to have a space in which we can translate our view, on the issues facing Europe, into words imbued with confidence in the future.

Because, in the end, our goal remains the same: to reach the hearts and minds of those who – despite everything – still believe that the future is not something to wait for, but to build. And that Europe, even before being an institution, is a shared responsibility.

Mariavittoria Natale Europe member for Italy