Young people from North Macedonia and Greece believe in joint cooperation and a common future. They should be given a voice towards creating better mechanisms for mutual cooperation, getting to know each other through different ways and activities, heard a two-day conference in Skopje on setting up offices for youth cooperation between the two countries.

The youth perception survey of the Youth Alliance that was presented at the conference shows that young people from Greece rarely travel to North Macedonia (37 percent), unlike youth from North Macedonia travelling to Greece (83.6 percent). Both sides believe there is room for change, with 86 percent of Greek youth wanting to travel to North Macedonia, and a similar number of North Macedonia youth (88 percent), who would pick Greece as their favorite travel destination.

The survey included interviews, polls and focus groups involving over 700 young people aged 18-35 from both countries.

The Youth Alliance says conference participants agreed that the Prespa Agreement was an important step in normalizing bilateral relations and a positive step forward regarding institutional cooperation. In this view, the countries’ governments should invest their political influence in order to create a direct mechanism for concrete youth activities.

The conference produced a draft-document of policies and activities that will be forwarded to the countries’ ministries of foreign affairs.

The event was the final part of the first stage of the initiative on setting up youth cooperation offices between North Macedonia and Greece by the Youth Alliance-Krushevo. The project is supported by the embassies of Germany and the United States, with the aim of setting up more bilateral youth offices in the neighboring countries. The first two have already opened in Thessaloniki and Valandovo, with over 500 people involved in diverse programmes of knowledge and experience exchange.