The Youth Organization of the European People’s Party (YEPP) organized between May 14 and 17 the 10th Congress in Porto and Maia. The Hungarian Youth Council of Romania was represented at the event by Botond Talpas, Richárd Kovács and Zsombor Ambrus.
Preparations started on Thursday at Porto Business School. Delegates were divided into two working groups, most of them worked on the Political Programme2015-2017, others, however, did some brainstorming on the amendment of the Statute. In the evening, Konstantinos Kyranakis, President of YEPP and the Vice-presidents of Juventude Social Democrata and Juventude Popular welcomed the delegates.
The working groups continued their activity on Friday morning when they finalized and adopted the amendment proposals which were adopted or rejected as final amendments next day during the Congress plenary session. In the afternoon, delegates were welcomed in Maia by the Mayor of Maia. Speeches followed where Joseph Daul, President of European People’s Party and MEP Nuno took the floor. The evening ended with the speech of Portugal’s Prime Minister who talked about the elections in Portugal taking place at the end of September and about the economic recovery.
The most important part of the Congress began on Saturday. Apart from the Statute and Political Programme, member organizations prepared 13 resolutions they wished to be adopted during the plenary session. These were passed with some modifications, except for one. Resolutions covered a wide range of topics starting from promoting a closer cooperation between the United Kingdom and the EU, through calling the WHO for paying greater attention to Ebola and ending with the very relevant immigration policy.
MIÉRT would be especially interested in a resolution that would urge the participation in the decision-making mechanisms of local authorities. Even though calling for the introduction of participatory budgeting was taken out from the final and adopted version of the resolution, YEPP adopted an important paragraph: „The governments of member states must implement institutional reforms and amendments whereby local authorities will be invested greater duties, thus, bringing decision-making closer to citizens.”
During the plenary session, Christian Democratic Youth Association of Hungary, Juventude Popular of Portugal, TLDM of Moldova, Mladez HDZ BiH of Bosnia and the KDMS of Slovakia were unanimously declared full members by YEPP, consequently, increasing the number of Hungarian delegation in YEPP.
Kostas, President of YEPP was re-elected at the plenary session. The election of the new secretary, a Croatian girl, came as a novelty as this is the first time when a woman holds such a high position in YEPP. Nine out of ten vice-president candidates had to be elected during the plenary session; the good news in that representing Fidelitas, Csaba Faragó became Vice-president of YEPP. Andrianos Giannou representing Romania TDL also was included in the presidency.
At the Congress, MIÉRT has an important aim to invite YEPP to Transylvania. Following many discussions and consultations, and thanks to the good reputation of the European Youth Forum organised in Cluj-Napoca last November, the new board is familiar with Cluj-Napoca and Transylvania and it considers a good idea to organize a board meeting in Cluj-Napoca. We have a promise in this sense as the board considers that it would be possible to organize such an event this year in Cluj-Napoca.
Botond Talpas
Richárd Kovács
Zsombor Ambrus
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