The Berlin Process, as one of the most important and inclusive processes, has had a lot of successes in the last four years. Perhaps the most tangible one is the establishment of the Regional Youth Cooperation Office, but there are other regional initiatives which are as unique and original. In the scope of the Berlin Process, there have been meetings, conferences and newly established relations and cooperation between businesses, chambers of commerce, civil society, young people, experts and professionals in different fields, most notably Prime Ministers of the Western Balkans region. Diverse groups of stakeholders and beneficiaries of regional cooperation have somehow been a part of the Berlin Process. However, the involvement of Parliaments and MPs has not been fostered significantly to this date.
The Southeast Europe Initiative of the Franco-German Youth Organisation, in cooperation with the Youth Initiative of Human Rights, Crossborder Factory and our partner organisation RYCO, with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office, launched a joint initiative in the summer of 2018 to inform parliamentarians from the Western Balkans region (WB6) about the tasks and objectives of RYCO, and to raise awareness within WB6 parliaments.
ryco
The aim of this project is to strengthen regional dialogue and cooperation among parliamentarians in the Western Balkans on specific youth policy issues and to give additional impetus to the need for an inclusive policy in the Western Balkans region.
At the regional working meeting in Tirana on June 25-27, the parliamentarians drafted a resolution in which they defined further concrete steps and expressed their firm will to actively support RYCO (click here for the resolution).
In April 2019, a next working meeting is planned in cooperation with members of the German Bundestag, the French Assemblée Nationale and members of the Polish Sejm in order to discuss the challenges and opportunities of closer regional cooperation in the Western Balkans on youth-specific issues and to gather information on existing European experiences of cross-border cooperation.
In a second project in April 2019, young people from the Western Balkans will discuss with parliamentarians in Tirana, Skopje, Pristina, Podgorica, Sarajevo and Belgrade about the future of young people in the region and the meaning and content of the term ``regional cooperation``. The results of this dialogue will be presented at the working meeting of parliamentarians in April 2019.