EU-Funded Youth Project Partners With European Muslim Brotherhood Youth Group

In late 2021, a new EU-fund­ed project by the Euro­pean Youth Forum has part­nered with the Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO), a youth umbrel­la of the Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Accord­ing to a descrip­tion on the “The 25 Per­cent,” cam­paign web­site, the project is aimed at fos­ter­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion among young people:

Despite mak­ing up the 25% of the Euro­pean pop­u­la­tion, young peo­ple face many bar­ri­ers to hav­ing a say on our future. Whether it’s a lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties and rep­re­sen­ta­tion or knowl­edge for effec­tive advo­ca­cy, we are left with­out ways to share our voice and make the changes we want to see in our world. We want to change that. Since June 2021, we have talked to young peo­ple about their vision for the future of Europe and gath­ered their views and ideas. The Con­fer­ence on the Future of Europe pro­vides the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to feed these ideas into an insti­tu­tion­al process which will result in real change.

Read the rest here.

“The 25 Per­cent” seeks to gath­er more than 100 young peo­ple from all over Europe for a 24 Feb­ru­ary 2022 online event titled “Con­fer­ence on the Future of Europe,” where par­tic­i­pants can present their ideas and rec­om­men­da­tions to mem­bers of a vir­tu­al ple­nary ses­sion. The event is set to fea­ture sev­er­al Euro­pean par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, includ­ing MEPs from France, Aus­tria, Roma­nia, Poland, and Fin­land. The “25 Per­cent” project web­site pro­vides users with gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the Euro­pean polit­i­cal sys­tem and lists eleven oth­er project part­ners, most of them Youth Coun­cils from Euro­pean Coun­tries. The web­site also offers var­i­ous cam­paign­ing mate­ri­als, includ­ing a com­pre­hen­sive “hand­book to activism,”  and says the project is co-financed by the Euro­pean Union as part of the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s Grant Pro­gram for Communications.

Found­ed in 1996, the Euro­pean Youth Forum serves as a plat­form and advo­ca­cy group of 105 nation­al youth coun­cils and inter­na­tion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal youth orga­ni­za­tions through­out Europe. It works chiefly on Euro­pean youth pol­i­cy mat­ters and youth rights. 

FEMYSO is the youth/student arm of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims, known to rep­re­sent the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. One of the impor­tant lead­ers of FEMYSO over the years has been Ger­man Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Ibrahim El-Zay­at. In recent times, its lead­er­ship has been drawn from the fam­i­ly of impor­tant Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers. Almost all FEMYSO mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions are also tied to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. Over the years, FEMYSO has devel­oped rela­tion­ships with the Coun­cil of Europe, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, and many oth­er sig­nif­i­cant orga­ni­za­tions at the Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al lev­els. In Novem­ber 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that FEMYSO par­tic­i­pat­ed in a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence with the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Exec­u­tive Vice-Pres­i­dent to dis­cuss the Euro­pean Green Deal proposals.