Vedrana Gujić – President

BUREAU REPORT May–October 2015

Dear delegates,

Coming to an end of the first year of our mandate, when we’ve seen the increase of events, as well as political activities, we have used this third semester to implement a number of specific tasks that this Bureau has assigned for itself. While continuing with regular events such as Congresses, Summerschools and seminars, we aimed to implement activities which would extend the standard target group of participants and raise the visibility of LYMEC inside and outside our network.

In May we have organized the first ever LYMEC Young Local Councilors gathering and renewed our partnership with ALDE CoR group. The event has a threefold success, first by gathering the young elected political representatives we have attracted new liberals interested in our work, we combined political discussion with the on-sight experience of the work of European institutions, bringing with it an added value for our participants and we’ve strengthened cooperation with ALDE CoR, who decided to continue with the event also next year.

The event also hosted our second book launch – Tackling regional disparities trough growth, which is a great way to keep institutional memory of policies and ideas for the current and future generations of liberals. I would like to thank all writers for their contributions.

Second event which I am extremely proud of is LYMEC delegation to Europride in Riga, where we’ve had an intensive training on one of the core topics for the liberals – LGBTI rights in Europe, but also gathered a respective number of young liberals to join the pride, bring activist spirit to LYMEC and increaseour visibility on international and NGO/PPYO scene.

Similar increase of visibility on the European and transatlantic NGO/PPYO scene was made on our TTIP day on the 16. May, when we organized a Europe-wide campaign for the promotion of facts and benefits of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. I would like to thank to all MOs who participated and helped to make this event a success and especially to our campaign leader Jelena Jesajana and visual and social media support Edgaras Mascinskas.

The intention to bring more active politics into our events was a reason why we decided to hold this year’s Young Leaders meeting on the date of the elections in Catalonia, where we were able to combine the intensive leadership and communication training with the on-field experience of campaigning and election observation, which gives an added value to our events. This type of activity has gotten positive feedback and we will do our best to combine both theory and political practice also in the events to come.

Second thing I would like to highlight is the raise of political relevance of LYMEC. As a consequence of our intense political activities and involvement in political issues, LYMEC was praised and singled out on a number of meetings of our partners, from ALDE Party, MEPs to ELF.

We’ve also gotten political visibility through the invitations to chair relevant ALDE Party activities. I have served as chair of the Urgency working group and the subsequent agenda point of the ALDE Party Council and one of the events of the Reclaiming Liberalism series on Economic Justice. This has put LYMEC in the spotlight and earned us praise from both national political parties as well as ALDE leadership and opened the doors for cooperation on political topics such as TTIP and/or refugees on equal footing with others. We will use the end of our mandate to fortify that position and engage in more political activities of our partners on all levels.

Let me use this opportunity to thank the Bureau and the Office for all the efforts put in achieving these goals and helping to build political content, strength and reputation of LYMEC in the last 6 months.

Liberally yours,

Vedrana

Events attended:ALDE Party Bureau meeting and Council, Oslo, LYMEC/ALDE CoR Young Local Councillors event, Bruxelles, LYMEC IMS seminar and Europride, Riga, ALDE Party Bureau meeting and Reclaiming Liberalism – Economic justice seminar, Bruxelles, LIBSEEN Leaders meeting and 25 years of FNF in SEE, Sofia, LYMEC Young Leaders meeting, Barcelona, Reclaiming liberalism – Refugees and Migration seminar, Bruxelles, IRI Leadership Academy, Vienna, Another way for Spain conference, Madrid.