Forthcoming policy developments

Developing youth engagement through Olympism

The Government wants to get the general public involved in the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is achieved by implementing measures aimed at "developing bénévolat charity work opportunities for people with disabilities in major sporting events".

Several actions have been taken, including training 3,000 volunteers with disabilities. This measure is aimed in particular at permanently changing “discriminating social representations of disability, strengthening social ties and offering new meeting places”; as well as “boosting and diversifying sports bénévolat in France”.

In addition, initiatives aimed at strengthening youth participation have also been launched:

 The preparation for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games is indeed seen as a special opportunity to develop youth engagement. With a view to the 2024 Games, civic service missions, which will be geared towards preparing for and supporting this event, will be developed by the Civic Service Agency and French athletes.

In the SNE – national universal service (service national universel) system, sport is one of the 7 thematic modules provided during the cohesion residential trip. Young people will therefore be able to take part in sports while also being made aware of the values of Olympism.

Between 2020 and 2024, the Government wants more than a million young people to have been made aware of Olympism.

Source: https://www.gouvernement.fr/sites/default/files/document/document/2019/1...

Ongoing debates

The recommendation of the CESES – Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Conseil économique, social et environnemental): encourage civic engagement and citizen participation in sustainable development

The Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) is the third constitutional assembly in France after the National Assembly and the Senate. A consultative assembly alongside the public authorities, the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) promotes dialogue between the different components of civil society and political decision-makers.

In March 2022, the EESC published a report entitled "Engagement and democratic participation of young people", which sets out seven recommendations aimed at increasing participation in democratic life and restoring young people's confidence in public life:

- Ensure active teaching of democracy from nursery school onwards to encourage the exercise of citizenship from the earliest age

- Develop and maintain reciprocal links between young people, republican institutions and civil society organisations

- Integrate young people upstream in the construction of public policies that concern them directly or indirectly

-Access to information that clearly presents the stakes and actors of each election

- Organise simpler registration and voting procedures

- Revitalising representative democracy through demands for accountability of elected representatives, renewal of political bodies and continuous democracy

In this report, the EESC highlights the following avenues for consideration:

- Electronic voting by secure digital identification

- Postal voting

- Real consideration of the blank vote

- Resemble to better represent": that elected representatives be more representative of the population living on French territory in terms of age, gender and socio-professional categories, in order to renew the link between citizens and elected representatives.