JEUNES EUROPEENS FEDERALISTES AISBL

The Young European Federalists (JEF Europe) is a European network, a membership-based international non-profit organisation, composed of 31 member organisations (JEF national branches, that we refer to as ‘JEF sections’) across Europe. Most of these national sections have regional and local sections, bringing JEF presence to more than 300 cities across Europe, and with more than 10,000 members/volunteers (aged between 18 and 35 years old) and 200,000 beneficiaries directly, as well as more than 10 million European citizens indirectly through our awareness raising campaigns, social media and street actions, promoting citizen engagement on all levels. JEF Europe campaigns for the creation of a democratic European federation as a crucial safeguard for peace, as a guarantee for a more free, just and democratic society. JEF promotes active European Citizenship, through direct citizen participation and engagement. We work for the widening and deepening of the EU and strive for a fairer and more integrated society on the European continent. We started our work in 1972 and since then have been constantly growing and working on spreading European spirit all over Europe. Our activities, policy and daily work is based on five pillars; (1) democracy, participation, and transparency; (2) subsidiarity; (3) autonomy and division of competences; (4) peace, Rule of Law and Human Rights; (5) united in diversity. As a European Network, we are working on supporting our local, regional and national sections with capacity-building for the implementation of activities promoting active citizenship, citizen engagement, participative democracy, European values, European civic education or a strong European common identity. The capacity-building happens either at local, regional, or national level, or at European level, where young people coming from different European countries meet to expand their network and foster European values and common understanding. Another focus point of our educational activities are policy areas, such as European democracy, electoral rights and processes, and rule of law. We also address topical issues such as the emergence of fake news, youth participation in the Conference on the Future of Europe, environmental and sustainability practices, inclusion and diversity. Besides capacity-building for European citizens, we also work on having a significant impact on policy developments at European, regional, national and local level. This is achieved by advocating for our ideas, based on the priorities of our membership and our core value of federalism, within our wide network of civil society organisations. We always focus on acting as a network, bringing the ideas from our grassroot activists to a European level and making our voices heard. In the past years, JEF’s network has been expanding rapidly and we have representatives in important, Europe-wide civil society and youth networks, such as in the Civil Society Europe, European Youth Forum as well as in the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe.