PETROVAC – Union of High School Students of Montenegro organized a round table on the theme “Youth and Economic and Investment Plan for the Western Balkans”, within the framework of the “Youth Connection Platform”, established in 2017, with the aim to promote the connection of young people in the region.
At the round table, Anja Kečalović spoke on behalf of the Directorate of Sports and Youth, Ana Popović on behalf of the EU Information Center and Nina Krgović represented the International Labor Organization. The panelists talked about how this plan targets young people but also touched on many other topics that affect young people.
Ana Popovic said the IEP is very important for young people and their employment.
“This plan involves a further step so that young people, in addition to receiving an offer of quality employment and continuing education, also obtain an internship within four months of losing their job or leaving education. formal,” said Popović.
According to Popović, in addition to this plan, it is also very important that young people are informed in time about all the opportunities available to young people, both in the country and at the European Union level, for example. Erasmus+ student and youth exchange program, volunteering and the “European Solidarity Force” community contribution program.
She stressed that the debate with young people and representatives of decision-makers is important because, in addition to knowing each other, exchanging experiences and reducing the generation gap, it allows them to understand and overcome problems more easily.
Vladimir Perazic of the Union of High School Students of Montenegro declared for the Western Balkans European Portal that the EIP is among ten key investments in areas of key importance for economic development.
According to him, this plan presents potential for the development of youth organizations in the region.
“The Economic Investment Plan recognizes safeguards for young people among ten key investments in areas of critical importance for economic development. These guarantees are granted with the aim of creating jobs for young people. Taking into account the fact that unemployment is one of the key problems faced not only by young people but also by all citizens of Montenegro, these measures are of great importance for young people and therefore can have an impact on the problem of unemployment. young people who leave the country,” Perazić said.
Speaking about the Connecting Youth platform, Perazic said that it is good that this platform is designed as a resource center for young people in the Western Balkans.
“With Connecting Youth Platform, young people can find partners for different activities, design and implement different initiatives and exchange ideas. This is why it is so important to us, as one of the six partner organizations (countries). It’s great that this connects young people from the Western Balkans, for whom we believe this type of networking is very necessary at some point,” said Perazić.
He estimated that young people in Montenegro see the benefits of European integration, but not enough.
“Although there are many attempts to introduce the theme of “European integration” into schools, it is still not sufficiently represented, nor presented to students in a way that interests them to choose the subject. same thing in elective courses. According to the 2019 Montenegro Youth Study, conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation, as many as 23.2% of young people said they were unsure whether Montenegro should join the EU, and 18.1% said general, did not respond. However, 45.3% support Montenegro’s membership in the EU, which far exceeds those who oppose it (13.4%),” Perazic emphasized.
He pointed out that the same research showed that almost a third of young people in Montenegro do not know what impact membership would have on the country’s economy.
“38.5% think the impact would be positive, while 10.5% think there will be no impact and 8.9% think the effect would be negative. From this we can conclude that there is a share of conscious and educated youth, but that we still need to work on education and encourage conversation on this topic. “Almost half of young people in Montenegro do not see the benefits of EU membership due to a lack of information,” concluded Perazić.