ZAGREB, 14 May 2022 - More than a thousand young Europeans will attend the Ø BORDERS youth programme in Varaždin in November, comprising workshops on democratic processes as well as various concerts,  the European Parliament Liaison Office in Zagreb has recently reported.

The two-day programme, known as  Ø BORDERS will be held on 25 and 26 November and will focus on youth, their knowledge, curiosity and innovativeness, the organisers said. 

The programme includes workshops on democratic processes and public policy as well as concerts.

The event is being organised in Croatia by the V.U.K. association of Varaždin youth and the P4 Centre. The organisers have been issued a grant from the European Parliament for this purpose.

"We have followed and always follow the events in Europe and the rest of the world so we created a programme that will address topics related to democracy and the importance of election processes, migration, green policies and geopolitics in general," one of the programme leaders, Nino Preložnjak said.

The event is being organised in partnership with the Network of Croatian Youth and the Croatian Scouts Association with full support from Varaždin city authorities, said Preložnjak.

The European Youth Event (EYE) is an event initiated and hosted by the European Parliament with the aim of stimulating active citizenship amongst young Europeans.

The Varaždin version will also provide a series of activities and debates, interactive workshops, plays, entertainment and educational programmes.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 24 Feb 2022 - Croatia should work on the political education of its young people because they are not taught enough about the European Union's structure and policies before their school-leaving exam, a panel was told in Zagreb on Thursday.

The panel, entitled "The EU and Youth - Communication Noise", was devoted to communication between the EU institutions and citizens, in particular young people.

Many citizens are not acquainted with the responsibilities of the European Parliament, European Commission, European Council, and the Council of the European Union, and young people in Croatia are no exception, even though they have been living in the EU for nine years now.

Sunčana Glavak, a Croatian member of the European Parliament from the European People's Party group, said that changes to the education system were needed so that young people learned which EU institution was responsible for what.

"I think it is too late, for example, for political sciences students to learn about the EU's political system in the final year of their undergraduate program. By comparison, while I was in secondary school, we were taught a lot about the system of the country I was living in at the time," she told young journalists at the panel, referring to the former Yugoslavia.

Former Green MEP Davor Škrlec said that for a long time there had been a prevailing opinion among the citizens that "everything is in the hands of the European Commission, while the European Parliament is just some sort of nuisance, which of course is not true."

"Young people experience the European Union only at university, through the Erasmus Programme. They should be informed about EU policies earlier and should be given a chance to say what bothers them and how they can resolve a certain problem," Škrlec said.

Young people should be encouraged to think about and discuss current problems and future challenges, the panel was told.

Glavak also raised the issue of the language used by EU politicians and institutions, which is often unintelligible to the public in general and puts them off from following EU policies. "Politicians should simplify their language. We are stuck in archaic forms of communication, and young people have no time for that," she noted.

Nikica Stijepić, a student at the Faculty of Political Sciences, said he agreed that the names of the EU institutions were confusing, but that a priority should be given to programs that would inform young people about European topics, such as the European Youth Parliament.

"Through the European Youth Parliament I had a chance to learn about problems my colleagues from other countries were thinking about," Stijepić said.

Last year the EU institutions launched a Conference on the Future of Europe to get closer to the citizens and hear their ideas about the direction in which the Union should be developing. In September, 800 randomly selected Europeans were invited to four panels and three discussions to adopt recommendations for the EU institutions as to what they expected from the European alliance.

This panel within the Conference on the Future of Europe was organized by Hina in cooperation with Radio Student and Global, the newspaper of political sciences students.

For more, check out our politics section.

July 19, 2021 - With many options for scientific research, Croatian scientists researched radicalism and presented their findings at the conference hosted by the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP).

Croatian scientists continue to make a global impact with their research. As Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute informed on its website, Ph.D. candidate Tomislav Pavlović participated in the 44th annual International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) conference that occurs from July 11-13.

As listed by the official website of the Society, ISPP is an interdisciplinary organization representing all fields of inquiry concerned with exploring the relationships between political and psychological processes. Nonprofit, scientific, educational, and non-partisan.

„Members include psychologists, political scientists, psychiatrists, historians, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, as well as journalists, government officials, and others. The Society is international, with members from all regions of the world: the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa“, says ISPP.

Pavlović participated in two panels of this year's online conference.

„Within excellently moderated and visit panel “The Process of Radicalization II“, Tomislav Pavlović presented findings of research regarding roles of dark personalities character traits and inequality in predicting radicalized intentions“, stated Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute.

The research, Pavlović co-authored with a senior scientific adviser at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Renata Franc is published as part of the EU Horizon DARE project.

DARE stands for Dialogue About Radicalisation and Equality and its goal is to „significantly increase understanding of why and how young people become radicalised and our capacity to effectively counter-radicalisation“. The project started on May 1 2017 and it will be concluded this October.

„Despite multiple studies providing evidence of subjective inequality and dark personality traits as predictors of extremism, their interactive effect on extremism has not been studied. As such interactions are implied in multiple models of radicalization, this research was focused on testing them. While Study 1 (N = 279), based on a convenient student sample, established the interaction between perceived group relative socio-political deprivation and Dark Triad traits in the prediction of support for political violence, Study 2 (N = 461), based on a quota sample, specified it in the context of radicalized intentions: emotional component of group deprivation (anger, contempt, and disgust) interacts with the Dark Tetrad in the prediction of radicalized but not activist intentions, even after correcting for social desirability bias. Their combined explanatory power (up to 25% of explained variance) robustly confirms the role of individual dispositions and (responses to the perception of) contextual factors, as well as their interactions, in radicalization“, says the abstract of Pavlović's and Franc's research.

„Additionally, as part of „Authoritarianism, Ethnocentrism, and Social Dominance“ panel, Tomislav Pavlović presented findings of psychometric, intercultural check of the relatively new orientation scale for social dominance (SDO-7) (Factor structure of the short form of Social dominance orientation questionnaire (SDO7) on youth samples from multiple countries; examined by dana gathered by questionnaires of pupils from nine countries as part of the CHIEF project (Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future)“, added Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute.

Along with other researches conducted within the CHIEF project, Pavlović's participation in the conference is one more beautiful instance of Croatian scientific excellence. This shows Croatian scientists are stepping out as equals with their international colleagues presenting findings which, when it comes to social sciences, may not only help solve problems Croatia is facing but the world in general.

When it comes to youth, learn more about what Croatia can offer to kids and families on our TC page.

For more about science in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

June 23, 2021 - Youth Work in Flux Conference held in Rijeka mid-June saw scholars, researchers, scientists, and professionals discuss and present their work in the domain of youth work.

With more and more concern invested in youth in Croatia (both academically and professionally), June 15-17 saw Rijeka as the host of the conference titled „Youth work in flux: an academic point of view on youth work training and education“.

The conference was organized by the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb and partners: University of Rijeka and Slovenian University of Ljubljana held as part of the Erasmus + project Supporting Evidence-based Education of Youth Workers.

„Our aim is to strengthen the epistemic community of scholars and researchers in the domain of youth work, while instigating an academic debate on existing knowledge in the domain, defining further topics that need to be explored, and investigating the possibilities of co-creating the knowledge with actors from the community“, said the official website of the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb as the page was inviting „all interested scholars, researchers, and doctoral students to submit their abstracts and contribute to shedding light on this proliferating topic“.

Among such researchers, Dr. Marko Mustapić and Dino Vukušić from the Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute stood out. The two researchers presented results of the research „Youth Activism and Sport: Legacy of Dražen Petrović and ‘heritage in the making’“. Their ethnographic research investigated „Mi smo Cibona“ (We Are Cibona) association, centered around Cibona, a famous Zagreb basketball club, and how the youth in that association respond to the famous Croatian sportsman Dražen Petrović – how they perceive, interpret, or reinterpret Petrović's material and symbolic heritage and how they feel about basketball club today and what is the future of the association's activism.

The research was done as part of a project called CHIEF - Cultural Heritage and Identities of European Future done in the Horizont2020 frame.

As Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute informs, CHIEF started on May 1, 2018, with a budget of 4,58 million euros. The concept was split into 10 working packages challenging both in theory and in practice, but with a goal to conduct field research on the population 14-25 years of age, to see what we can perceive about Europe's identity in the future as these new generations develop into social and political participants.

With such conferences and various projects that aim to empower youth to stay in Croatia, it is evident that the importance of youth is finally recognized in the country. But, will that be enough to engage politicians to offer more things for the youth and stop the exodus of young Croatians from the country is yet to be revealed by future events.

When it comes to youth, learn more about what Croatia can offer to kids and families on our TC page.

For more about science in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.