The European Youth Event – EYE 2021 took place in Strasbourg on 8-9 October 2021. This was the largest European youth event, taking physically place for the first time after the Covid-19 pandemics breakout and bringing together around 3,000 young people from all over Europe. The organizers from the European Parliament made sure that every participant was either vaccinated or tested in order to be granted with an access to the event.
The Phiren Amenca International Network became an official partner of the event for a 4th consequent time, being part of the EYE organization since 2014. 21 young participants – Roma and non-Roma coming from Belgium, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, North Macedonia and Ukraine formed the Phiren Amenca group at the EYE.
The participants could take part in a number of workshops and events, bookable and free for attendance, inside the European Parliament and outside of it – in the so-called EYE village. This was a great opportunity to raise awareness about the Roma Youth across Europe and the issues they face – particularly the issue of antigypsyism.
To spread additionally awareness on the topic, the Phiren Amenca team held a special event named Together Against Antigypsyism led by Ildiko Csanya and Atanas Stoyanov. The event took place in the “Ideas Tent” of the EYE Village on 8 October, from 14 to 15.00 h. There participants could have an interactive quiz to learn more about Roma people, learn more about the definition and examples
of antigypsyism and most importantly, discuss what politicians, media, civil society and young people could do to fight and prevent antigypsyism.
As part of this session young people were also asked to give their ideas for a better Europe – part of a project of the European Youth Forum where Phiren Amenca is a partner. This project, titled “The 25 %” aims at gathering 10 000 ideas from young people which are going to be presented at the Conference for the Future of Europe. You can also give your idea here.
On the 9th October a big part of the Phiren Amenca group took part in the Check your bias: become an ally anti-racist workshop organized by the DiasporaVote Association. We witnessed more than a dozen young French people associated with the far-right Identity and Democracy , co-led by the French Marine Le Pen and the Italian Matteo Salvini, who have attended this workshop to deliberately try to boycott it from within. We strongly condemn their actions and we are calling to the European Parliament to make sure that there are no far right youth groups allowed in future events of the EYE!
More about the EYE 2021 you can find at.