A White Paper is a document containing recommendations for action by the European Community in a particular field. Once approved by the Council of Ministers, the document may become “a programme of action” for the Union. It’s not a bill or the text of a piece of legislation. It’s more like a “declaration of intention” in which the Commission commits itself to promoting policies and actions aimed at achieving the objectives outlined in the Paper. Since 1985, 17 White Papers have been approved on various questions and in various fields of action: EU policy on energy, railways, food safety, and so on. The White Paper on European Youth was approved by the European Commission in 2001. Its main “ambition” explains the introduction to the document is to equip the European Union with “a new framework of cooperation” in the field of youth: one that may “respond to young people’s expectations and yet be realistic”. It thus forms part of the wider project of governance that consists “in opening the Union’s decision-making process to the participation of citizens, and hence of young citizens, in the decisions of concern to them”. The document starts out from the recognition that young people have lost trust in the existing decision-making structures, but also show a desire to have “something to say because they are the first to be affected by economic changes, demographic imbalances, globalization and the diversity of cultures”. “The young says the White Paper want to be understood and regarded as interlocutors in their own right; they want to construct Europe; they want to influence the debate on its future”. Listening to the young, offering them a sounding box about local projects, encouraging member states to launch concrete actions: that is the strategy proposed by the White Paper to “create the conditions for the full participation of youth in European life”.
