Our values
Management of volunteer recruitment: inclusion objective
Inclusive recruitment
Optimal preparation
Quality volunteering
Professional integration
A supportive commitment
A European commitment for local action
The core values of an innovative mechanism
A cross-functional approach: interstate, associative, European.
European mobility through civic commitment comes up against a number of difficulties.
On the one hand, existing schemes (such as the European Solidarity Corps) are still mainly aimed at the most educated, advantaged and informed young people.
On the other hand, these schemes are hampered by a lack of coordination with national civic services, which are developing very dynamically in a number of countries (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium). Convergence therefore seems desirable.
More institutionalized cooperation would strengthen European mobility through the convergence of national and European schemes.
National civic services are a natural lever for strengthening European mobility. A national stage, prior to departure to another Member State, provides both the framework and the time for learning, particularly language skills, to really open up mobility to all. In addition, the full mobilization of national schemes to promote European mobility, as a complement to European schemes, could make it possible to finance up to 350,000 additional European mobility schemes per year, at constant public budgets, by making mobility an essential stage in any national civic service (compared with the ESC's current target of 50,000/year). This could mean moving to another country, or simply getting involved at home alongside volunteers from other Member States.
More integrated cooperation between national civic services, involving the European Commission and the ESC, around the exchange of best practices and the convergence of schemes, would be a significant step towards achieving this objective.
This cooperation must be based on concrete experimental initiatives at local and European level. Our approach has always been to demonstrate the operational relevance of our scheme in order to reach a wider range of young people and encourage them to take up European mobility. We are seeking to establish a European network in this area and a model that can then be extended throughout the EU.
We tested our project on the basis of an experiment to be launched in September 2020 in the "Grande Région", which will enable people to complete 6 months of civic service, followed by 6 months of CES.
Our aim is to demonstrate that the system based on the complementary nature of national and European experience is functional and relevant, and to promote this idea to the point of opening up this experience to all young Europeans.
A pilot project at European level to establish an institutional framework that builds on existing synergies.
One way of better coordinating existing systems would be to promote a common legal framework, which currently does not exist.
The European Parliament's pilot project, which we are supporting, achieves this objective by structuring for the first time, as already stated in the strategic objectives of the ESC instrument, a highly complementary convergence of national civic services with the European Solidarity Corps.
The success of such a pilot project would enable both:1. To link existing national civic services with the European Solidarity Corps through the twofold experience we are proposing
2. To allow, within the framework of the European Solidarity Corps, and through this pilot project, the combination of a national experience with an experience in another Member State, in countries which do not yet have national civic services. This would encourage the spread of national civic service mechanisms.
The fact that France has won the Charlemagne Youth Prize is the first step towards making our project a reality.
Our story
2017Birth of the project
Informal work begins on the idea of a European civic service for all.Mai 2018Status deposit
Registration of statutes for the "Collectif pour un Service Civique Européen" association.Décembre 2018Partnership with Unis Cité
Launch of the idea of a local trial of the scheme; first partnership with Unis Cité.Septembre 2020Pilot project in France
The first group of young people in the Grand Est region to take up European Civic Service.Mars 2021Depearture in Europe
End of the first promotion of young European Civic Service volunteers. Departure to Italy of the French volunteers from the first promotion of the European Civic Service.
Pilot project in France
In September 2020, the Collectif pour un Service Civique Européen (Collective for a European Civic Service) began experimenting with its project: broadening mobility and making it more accessible, while building on existing schemes, the national civic service and the European Solidarity Corps (ESC).
The core of this new model is very simple. It allows young people to to start their civic service for 6 months at home, giving them the time and framework they need to prepare themselves to complete their experience with a civic service in another Member State as part of the ESC, the European Union's voluntary service programme.
This scheme also enables an authentically European experience throughout, since the groups of young people permanently combine 50% of young people carrying out the first phase of civic service at home (in the case of an assignment in France, French people), and 50% of young people from Europe carrying out the second phase of mobility. All missions will therefore be carried out collectively by young people of different nationalities.
The Collectif team, in charge of coordinating the experiment, took on the tasks that would benefit from economies of scale, at the request of its associative partners: finding funding and accommodation, managing accreditations, developing the network, facilitating transport, organising language courses, etc.
At the outset, the project brought together stakeholers and civic service volunteers from 5 Member States (France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy) for an experiment that took place from September 2020 at the heart of the Greater Region, a cross-border area that is already highly integrated.
AIn order to carry out the experiment, the CSCE relied on national civic service players and local players in Saarland and Rhineland. Those operational partners (Unis-Cité, theHaus Der Offenen Tür, the SHG Zentrum für Freiwilligen Dienstand the Spohns Haus) were responsible for welcoming young people during their mission. This choice of mission was determined by the experience of the various operational partners in hosting civic service volunteers.
The first promotion of the European civic service (SCE)organised by Unis-Cité in September 2020 was made up of 24 young people (50% French and 50% Europeans from outside France) in Metz, Lorraine. They were then joined by promotions created by each of the partners in their own countries, with the aim of extending the network as a whole in the future.
After a period of 6 months, these promotions are renewed and the young people who have started in their own country join the promotions in other territories, which allows both a permanent cross-fertilisation of experiences and a genuinely European environment at every stage of the volunteering project for the young people involved.