Among the other initiatives carried out in the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe, "Our Europe, Our Future" stood out for its ability to massively mobilize young people in France and Germany, with nearly 100,000 young people.

This success was made possible by an online consultation tool developed to allow for maximum involvement, in particular by reaching out to young people on social networks, and by obtaining results with a representative balance of all young people in both countries. This innovative digital tool is all the more relevant in a degraded health context as during Covid, where it was important to keep the democratic debate alive.

Beyond the massiveness, it is also the results coming out of this initiative that are decisive, with 11 common priorities of youth in France and Germany for Europe, and the fact that these can be transformed into concrete actions.

The innovation is currently under implementation

The French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs initiated the #ParoleauxJeunes consultation in France. A Franco-German project was gradually built and Make.org repeated the exercise in Germany, in cooperation with the Franco-German Youth Office (OFAJ), and with the support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The agreement and support of both ministries was necessary for the project and gave it the desired visibility.

The French and German youth participating in the consultation were the users of this democratic innovation, but were also among the beneficiaries. The objective was also to make the priorities of the youth of both countries known to the national and European institutional actors, and to bring these priorities to the Conference on the future of Europe.

The "Our Europe, Our Future" initiative involved 95,000 young people in France and Germany, more than 3,500 proposals on the future of Europe, and 730,000 votes that allowed 11 common priorities of young people in France and Germany to emerge. All the results of these consultations were integrated on the online platform of the Conference to be part of its conclusions, and several events were organized to publicize the results of these consultations.

To bring these priorities to life, the project laboratory "Our Europe, Our Future" organized in Dresden in March 2022 brought together, like the one in Lille, about fifty young people aged 18 to 30 from France and Germany. During 3 days, these young people thought about projects to answer the common priorities on the future of Europe. 20 concrete projects for the Europe of tomorrow have been created by young people from France and Germany and are carried by the people themselves.

One of the difficulties was to make this project a reality, going beyond the #ParoleAuxJeunes consultation in France. The political calendar, especially with the context of the federal elections in Germany in September 2021, made the integration of the approach into existing institutional processes more complex. It was necessary to mobilize all the actors interested and concerned by the project, in particular the French and German ministries, so that these results could be carried through the institutions to Europe. Moreover, the sociological approach of consulting the youth of two countries to identify their priorities was unprecedented for Make.org: we had to think about a new method of analysis and ensure that the consultations were sociologically comparable. Finally, demographic rebalancing of online participants had to be done to achieve a representative balance in terms of age, gender, and region.

The conditions necessary for the success of this project lie first of all in the motivation and commitment of the teams. As a European civic tech, the Make.org teams wanted to actively contribute to the Conference on the Future of Europe by giving a voice to young people. Similarly, the presence of Make.org in France and Germany, as well as the teams' mastery of both languages, facilitated the implementation and the quality of the results of the process, with a sociological and rigorous analysis of the priorities of young people in France and Germany for Europe. To ensure the legitimacy of the results, the massiveness and the steering of the representativeness were also important. Finally, the support of the French and German Ministries of Foreign Affairs, as well as that of the President of the French Republic, were decisive for the visibility and credibility of such a project.

An initiative like "Our Europe, Our Future" can be duplicated and carried out in other countries and by different types of actors. Indeed, such a consultation asking citizens for their priorities on a subject that affects them on a daily basis is a relevant way to establish a concrete citizen's agenda, faithful to the citizens' will, and which allows to engage thereafter concrete actions, with the citizens. Faced with issues that transcend borders, and whose solutions can be found collectively, a participatory approach between two regions or countries can not only strengthen ties between populations, but also to bring out common projects. Citizens increasingly want to be involved in decision-making processes and participate in public life. Democracies are also looking for solutions to get closer to their citizens, and to put their will at the center of public action.

The commitment and the massive participation of young people in these two consultations proved that it was possible to mobilize young people on European issues. In fact, contrary to popular belief, the results show that young people are very interested in the societal, civic, political and environmental issues of our time and the Europe of tomorrow. The 11 shared consensuses underline a significant commonality and reinforce the hypothesis already expressed in other Make.org consultations that there are many more consensuses between citizens than between governments. The opinions of the young French and Germans are of course complemented by singular ideas from each country. The cross-border priorities that emerged during the consultations also prove that this type of approach can be duplicated in other countries in order to strengthen the links between the citizens of a cross-border living area.