The European Parliament is still in its summer recess until 1 September. The European Youth Forum has used the summer break to take a closer look at the young MEPs under the age of 35 in each country.
It is particularly remarkable that five countries did not elect any members under 35 to parliament, namely Belgium, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg and Romania.
Are you surprised that there are so few young MEPs in the European Parliament? How could the representation of young voices be improved?
Source: Youth Forum, as of August 2024
What country is EU-27?
All current 27 EU members combined. Some statistics use EU-28 to keep the statistics compareable with pre Brexit numbers. However in this case that it does not make sense.
I see. The one who made that graphic could have been a bit more descriptive as all diagrams were based on country. Why the combined value amidst those? It’s rather confusing.
But thanks for the explanation.
For better or for worse, it’s a pretty common way of doing it. Having it presented among the other countries in this graph makes it very quick to check if a country is better or worse than the EU average.
under 35
young voices
Meh I wouldn’t want anyone under 25 speaking in parliament. 35 is a good boundary to consider being “young” for such an elite political position
What makes old people better than young people for such a great “elite political position”? Deserve younger people no proper representation in parliament? And no, older people can’t adequately represent young people, because they lived their youths long ago, under entirely different circumstances.
Also, if we have such an aggressive age cap towards lower ages, shouldn’t we have an age cap towards higher ages, too? I am above that proposed age cap of yours, yet I am sick of being governed by a bunch of borderline senile geezers.
I’m okay with a cap on both ends. 40-60 would be my age range.
I am getting why you’re arguing for a cap at the low end, but with present day full-time career politicians, 40 year old career politicians don’t really have any more real life experience than 22 years old career politicians, because all they have ever done for a living was being a career politician.
Should it be improved? Youth and ignorance are old bedmates. Social media has taught me exactly how dangerous it is for societies most inexperienced and naive having the loudest voice.
Ignorance is a problem with all ages. Social media are also frequented by older people, who will equally (or even more) easily fall for misinformation. Especially with career politicians, having predominantly older people in high positions is detrimental, because they have been living in the career politician bubble for a very long time and are even more out of touch with normal people’s everyday lives and problems than their younger counterparts.
Age and being out of touch are bed mates too. It should be representative of our population.
