On 14th May in the European Parliament, Paweł Zalewski MEP in the cooperation with the AEGEE Eastern Partnership Project will host a joint conference on "Youth mobility - the Key to Democratic Reforms in the Eastern Partnership Countries".  The event aims at presenting the current achievements of the visa facilitation process and their potential impact on democratic reforms as well as generating a debate on the challenges in the youth mobility and visa liberalisation before the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius in November.

The conference will be divided to three panels. The first one will serve for the European NGOs (European Students’ Forum AEGEE, European Youth Forum, Stefan Batory's foundation, Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum and Eurobelarus) as a platform for exchanging their opinions and experiences on the visa issues. In the second panel the representatives of the European Parliament, European Commission, Council and European External Action Service will discuss potential solutions and tools that might help in making further progress in the visa liberalisation. Finally, there will be a live chat targeting mainly the young people from the Eastern Partnership countries who will have a chance to share their experiences on this matter as well as ask questions to all the panelists. The conference will be followed by a photo exhibition displaying images of the political activists, journalists and sportsmen from the Eastern Partnership Countries who were denied the EU visas. After the exhibition, the organizers invite all the participants for a reception.

The event takes place in ASP P7C050 between 1 and 4pm. If you would like to register or receive more information about the following event, please send an email to pawel.zalewski-office@europarl.europa.eu.