Looking back at the first Youth Policy Dialogue with Commissioner Glenn Micallef
Last updated on Monday, 05/05/2025
On 28 January 2025, the Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, Glenn Micallef, held a Youth Policy Dialogue in Athens with the theme “All in: Promoting Inclusiveness through Sports and Culture”.
The Youth Policy Dialogue focused on key topics like fostering access to culture and cultural heritage for young people and the role of sport as a vehicle for inclusion, solidarity and social cohesion.
The Dialogue brought together 28 young people from diverse backgrounds - youth workers, Erasmus+ projects beneficiaries and coordinators, young actors, volunteers, and professionals in NGOs, members of national youth councils, EU Olympic Ambassadors, as well as active members of sport NA network, basketball coaches and players, special Olympics, para Olympics and the winner of the EUmies Awards Young Talent 2023, coming from different parts of Europe, including villages and rural areas.
The group of young people could choose to participate in one of the three discussions dedicated to:
- Making sport and culture careers a reality for youth
- Fostering access to culture and cultural heritage for young people
- Sport and inclusion.
Among the recurring concerns for young people were:
- imbalances between urban and rural areas and the need to decentralise culture and sport, considering that the main events related to both take place in the capitals or big cities;
- lack of funding and support of sports and cultural activities;
- the need to recognise and support professional careers in both fields;
- obstacles in combining professional and personal lives and the challenges related to mental health;
- pay gap between women and men in the fields of culture and sport;
- the need to educate children and parents on inclusion from early childhood, as well as educate coaches and support personnel in sport clubs on inclusion topics;
- the need to recognise the importance of non-formal education and the role of NGOs and associations;
- lack of accessible infrastructure and funding for assistants for disabled people;
- the need to make EU initiatives more visible to young people;
After the Youth Policy Dialogue, there was a lunch and an artistic presentation by the team of the Olympic Champion of Rhythmic Gymnastics.
This was followed by a wheelchair basketball match in the presence of Sofia Zacharaki, Greek Minister of Social Cohesion and Family, Ioannis Vroutsis, Greek Alternate Minister of Education, Religious Affairs and Sport, George Mavrotas, Greek Secretary General of Sport, Nikos Pappas, Member of the European Parliament, Haris Doukas, Mayor of Athens. Other guests included Lakis Lazopoulos, actor, Juancho Hernangomez, basketball player, Nikos Papangelis, Paralympian athlete, and Thodoris Iakovidis, Olympian athlete.
Participants had the chance to play side by side with professional wheelchair basketball players. In parallel, there was an interactive collective painting on canvas organised by the graffiti/mural artist Same84. The programme was concluded by a guided tour in the Acropolis Museum in which Commissioner Micallef participated alongside the 28 young people.
The event was covered by Greek media. Click here for the video on ERT TV.
