 Dear President of the Committee of the Regions, Vasco Cordero, Dear Commission Vice President Margaritis Quinas, Dear President of the European Youth Forum, Dear friends. I would like to welcome this important contribution of the Committee of the Regions, started under the EPP Core Presidency of Apostolos, the Charter for Youth and Democracy. This document is the result of a strong commitment from the core to engage in particular with youth organizations, including EPP, in order to build on projects and principles under the European Year of Youth and beyond. The Charter is the result of a participatory exercise through the whole year of 2022, where youth partners played the leading role. Moreover, this is why this ceremony is important. It gives dignity and symbolic importance to a relevant document that could contribute to influencing political processes in a transversal way, from the local level to the European level. Achieving a compromise in the construction of a tool like this recovers awareness of the importance of political commitments, the idea that it is possible through the debate of ideas involving civil society organizations to build proposals based on political consensus, creating better conditions for European citizens. This ceremony should also inaugurate a strategy to promote this Charter, starting with this celebration, we now must continue its path in its need for spreading out the message in its desire to deliver in the translation of proposals, ideas and commitments in concrete actions already in the next electoral processes. I would also like to highlight the fact that the four topics in the letter largely follow the Youth of the European People's Path's priorities, namely education, cooperation, information, youth empowerment, leadership and democratic participation, the role of new technologies and digitalization, and youth mainstreaming of policies and political representation. In the context of political participation and the defense of liberal democracy, which has been so threatened in recent times, these are in fact the main ideas, areas that guarantee us a healthy, full and future democratic construction. Nevertheless, allow me to highlight some concepts that I consider particularly relevant from the letter and which I could not fail to mention. The first one is generational inclusion and democratization. I find particularly interesting the will shown in the letter to create conditions for greater inclusion and political democratization, namely for young people with fewer opportunities. It is fundamental to strengthen the financial conditions of the youth organizations for these political participation. I must on this point make a warning so that the design of the programs, the evaluation criteria and the evaluators are as little biased as possible. At this regard, I call upon for respect of the political agendas from the organizations without limiting or technically conditioning the political agendas of the same organizations as it happened recently in some European financial programs. The second one is the dimension of intergenerational justice or fairness. The institution of a youth test mechanism to ensure that all new EU legislation and policies are subject to a youth focused impact assessment is something that deserves to be recognized and valued. It recovers an agenda that has been defended by this European center right organizations claiming for a sustainable future for the right of future for the new generations. The third one is the importance of political participation. We must be grateful, encouraged and value the political and citizenship participation of the youth. Fostering the conditions and spaces, forums for democratic youth participation is crucial in the developing and strengthening the liberal democracy. However, this political engagement must be a formal political participation. Digital spaces are important information and sharing platforms but they are often inconsequential. This aspect brings me to the next point. Valuing party militancy and formal spaces for political engagement. Democracy is built with rules and respecting those rules with practices and with elections. Experiencing democracy is the best way to exercise it. There is no democracy without political parties. We must stop certain political downgrade of political parties which so often opens space for populist discourses without any commitment to ideological principles. These discourses leave room for occasional political agents and at the behest of particular interests instead of a vision of the world that defends a collective common good with respect for the primacy of the dignity of the person. The fifth is young people in places of political representation. Young people are not only the future, they are the present and let's face it they are underrepresented compared to other generations in the spaces of political debate and decision. It is not enough to give voice and listen to what young people and their organizations have to say. We have to create conditions for younger generations, act, decide and take their place in the decision-making process. Being a member of the European Parliament of a government of a city council of a municipality cannot be a privilege of just a few. It has to be a political imperative of respect and representative justice if we want to continue to give democracy a future. I would like to thank you for the invitation and the opportunity given to me to share some thoughts and celebrate with you such important documents as the European Charter on Youth and Democracy.