Editorial

At the Berlin 05 festival, a political consciousness-raising event, Renate Schmidt, German Minister for Family Affairs and member of the German Social Democratic party (SPD), stated that young people no longer want to devote themselves body and soul to one political party. Instead, they prefer to be involved in tangible projects where they can gain a sense of accomplishment. 11,000 adolescents participated in this mega event, the purpose of which was to sound out whether young people's interest in politics could be raised in this way.

Such measures are triggered by the fact that the youth organisations of the German political parties are losing members. Nowadays, as the DJI Youthsurvey found out, a mere two percent of all young people aged 12-29 are members; in former times, this number was twice as high. However, this problem is not limited to the Federal Republic of Germany; other countries are facing similar developments.

To learn more about the background and attitudes of young Europeans vis-à-vis parties, politics, democracy or the European Union, an important prerequisite is to have a measuring tool that will guarantee internationally comparable survey results. For almost three years, an international team of researchers from eight EU Member States (with the German Youth Institute representing Germany) has been working on establishing comparative empirical youth research at the European level. At their final meeting in Brussels in July 2005, the researchers presented their model questionnaire, along with the preliminary results from the national surveys.

In Topic of the month, the German Youth Institute's online series, one issue of which is published in English each year (with the next appearing in August 2005), the Overview section provides information on the structure, development and results of the EUYOUPART project. In the Outside View section, Professor Peter Mohler, Director of the renowned Mannheim Centre for Survey Research and Methodology (ZUMA) for many years, explains the challenges and possible difficulties of comparative survey research.

The Interview section covers a talk with Franziska Wächter of the German Youth Institute. It contains details about the results of the survey based on interviews with 1,000 German adolescents. Incidentally, with regard to political participation, young Germans are currently in the lead, with an encouraging 51% of all young people interested in politics.

For most young Europeans, voting remains the most effective form of political participation, although their trust in political parties is universally very low throughout Europe. For young people, NGOs like Greenpeace, Amnesty International or Attac are much more attractive. Hence, the claim that young Europeans are tired of voting or generally disenchanted with politics is not quite valid.