European Young Leaders

Initiative

About Meet the EYL40 Events Insights Selection process Partners

About

Bold leadership, ground-breaking ideas, unparalleled passion …

For almost a decade the European Young Leaders (EYL40) programme has brought together the brightest minds and outside the box leaders to put their innovative thinking to work at building a more forward-thinking Europe that is a global champion for a better world. The European Young Leaders represent a new generation of leaders, able to tackle the increasing disconnects between citizens and political elites, to rebuild the trust that is vital to democracies.

These promising and established leaders come from a variety of backgrounds including politics, business, civil society, arts, science and the media.

The 2020-2021 Class of European Young Leaders:

Meet the class of 2020-2021

Learn more about the EYL40 programme

Tune in to the EYLs on Friends of Europe’s Leading Views podcast

Leading view

Joss Garman on the climate crisis: how bad is it (bad!) and can we get out of it (yes!)?

Joss Garman

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Leading view

Negar Mortazavi on Europe's role in the US-Iran dispute, the Trump factor and the role of media

Negar Mortazavi

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Leading view

Una Mullally on abortion rights, marriage equality and galvanising a generation for change

Una Mullally

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Meet the EYL40

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Selene works for the Prosperity Unit at the UNDP in Kabul, Afghanistan as a Portfolio Specialist. She is the founder of several social ventures, including Plain Ink, which creates free, educational comics for children and communities in developing countries, and Youth Action for Change (YAC), which provides high-quality and free online courses for young change-makers in 130 counties. Selene also serves as a member of RENA, an Italian association of young professionals promoting innovation, merit, youth empowerment and a new generation of local public policies, and the Italian Economic Development Minister’s Taskforce on Innovative Startups. She has previously worked as a consultant, trainer and speaker for various organisations, including the UN, Amnesty International, the World Bank, Oxfam, OSCE, the Council of Europe, Columbia University and Microsoft. She is a recipient of the Mother Teresa Award for Social Justice.

Denis (also known as Jaromil) is a free software programmer who founded Dyne.org, a website dedicated to the development of free software. He is also both a media artist and an activist. He has made significant contributions to the development of multimedia and streaming applications on the Linux platform and has led R&D activities in the Netherlands Media Art Institute for the past 6 years. He was honoured with the Vilém Flusser Theory Award in 2009, for his outstanding digital arts practice, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Planetary Collegium’s Milan node at the University of Plymouth.

Currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Antonio oversees the philanthropic arm of Thomson Reuters, leading on communications, monitoring and evaluation activities as well as the development functions of the organisation. Prior to his present role, Antonio worked as the Executive Producer at Bloomberg Television where he was in charge of news, factual programmes and documentaries for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He is also a member of the Pioneers Class at Stanford Graduate School of Business for the LEAD Program in Corporate Innovation.

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Arts and culture in Europe: relaunching economies, galvanizing values

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Megacities: challenges and opportunities for citizen engagement

23 Aug 2018

Category: #CriticalThinking
Author: By Katarzyna Nawrot

Can a simple sticker help us address climate change?

31 Jan 2018

Category: #CriticalThinking
Author: By Robert Shirkey

Green industrial policies can return Europe to the spotlight

28 Feb 2016

Category: #CriticalThinking
Author: By Edvard Glücksman

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Selection process

The European Young Leaders programme is a unique, inventive, and multi-stakeholder programme that aims to promote a European identity by engaging the continent’s most promising talents in initiatives that will shape Europe’s future.

The European Young Leaders represent the most promising European leadership from all over the continent and with a wide variety of backgrounds including: politics, business, civil society, academia, arts, science and the media.

The programme acts as a forum for those who have already established themselves at the forefront of their professions to meet, discuss and collaborate with their counterparts from other fields of expertise. Previous candidates include: government ministers, CEOs, Michelin-starred chefs, international film directors, and high profile journalists.

Since the launch of the programme, we have gradually taken steps to ensure the diversity and exceptional quality of its selection process. We have made sure that its comprehensive and competitive nature ensures the identification and selection of remarkable individuals.

We aim to select 40 European Young Leaders of diverse backgrounds in order to enable a broad exchange of ideas, creating the basis for a new generation of engaged European leaders.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Candidates must be between 30 and 40 years of age (born on or after 1 January 1982);
Candidates must be a national of an EU member state, the UK or of one of the 6 Balkan states currently on the path towards EU integration (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia);
Candidates should have established themselves at the highest levels of their chosen profession, or be on track to do so;
Candidates must be committed to serve society at large through noteworthy contributions and have demonstrated a record of significant achievements and outstanding professional experience;
Candidates are also evaluated based on their ability to contribute to the enrichment of the programme as a whole;
Candidates are required to be fluent in English as it is the working language of the programme.
Candidates must commit to participating in at least one seminar during the programme year.

To be considered for the 2022 selection process, all applications and nominations must be sent to: eyl40@friendsofeurope.org

Application deadline: Monday, 15 March 2021

To read in detail about the selection process, please click here

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