At the beginning of March, the EU published its first Strategy Paper on the topic of “intergenerational fairness”. It’s something of an abstract phrase, and the idea may be new to many readers, but this has been in the works for some time now. In 2024, the United Nations General Assembly signed a “Pact for the Future” and agreed to adopt a “Declaration on Future Generations”, and theUrsula von der Leyen Commission now includes Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Glenn Micallef, a Maltese politician (whose mandate also includes Youth, Culture, and Sport). His mission is to ensure EU policy protects the interests of “present and future generations” (4). In a sense, of course, making the future better is the goal of essentially all policy, particularly for international organisations like the EU. So why is an “intergenerational fairness strategy” necessary in the first place?
In 2025, the hashtag #Nicolasquipaie went from a viral quip to a political rallying cry on French social media: the meme, which originates on X (formerly Twitter) pictures a young middle-class millennial Nicolas who goes from métro to boulot to dodo being taxed brutally to pay for the pensions of Chantal and Bernard – the stereotypical Baby Boomers.
Meanwhile, the U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announcement that the salary threshold for student loan repayments (the amount you need to earn before you have to pay back what you owe the state for tuition) would be frozen for three years, rather than go up annually to reflect inflation, was met with a huge outcry.
If the EU and its key politicians are keeping an eye on rising dissatisfaction among young people, they’re right to be concerned. When young people do turn out to vote – albeit in lower proportions than in older generations – they’re favouring anti-establishment and populist parties, on both the left and right, which often align with skepticism around the European project in general. It’s hard to separate this from a rising sentiment among young people – particularly expressed online – that we’re getting the short end of the stick.
What are young people getting out of the EU?
The social contract is a theory most often associated with French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It refers to the idea that we citizens give up a certain amount of freedom and give the state legitimacy to decide things for us, in exchange for certain benefits, like security, that we couldn’t get for ourselves. For decades, younger people consistently trended towards pro-EU sentiments, and overwhelmingly expressed more support for EU enlargement than older generations.
But the benefits that young people currently say they’re getting out of the EU may not be enough, in years to come, to counteract rising nationalism and right-wing populism.
For example, when polled on what they like about the EU, young people overwhelmingly cite freedom of movement. Programmes like the hugely popular Erasmus scheme are incredibly good at showing students the value of European citizenship. The ability to go inter-railing unheeded by visas, or to study abroad, are not as powerful perks once students age and enter full-time employment. Meanwhile, older generations when polled on their support of further European integration are less supportive; in a 2025 survey, 66% of Generation Z supported further integration compared to only 55% of Baby Boomers. Meanwhile, the cost of living has become an increasing concern in polls, something that only becomes more stressful as we get older – and something that populist politicians like Nigel Farage successfully weaponised during the Brexit campaign to stir up Euroscepticism. The new Strategy may be responding to a potential existential threat: what happens if young people don’t think their national governments – or the EU – are holding up their end of the social contract?
Your money and your life
In the context of geopolitical instability, a rise in youth unemployment across Europe that’s increasingly – if not necessarily accurately – being blamed on AI, and a rise in online far-right sentiment and radicalisation across the world, it makes sense that the EU would want to show young people that they’re looking out for us.
The new strategy promises a series of new measures, including a Longevity Roadmap which could (through policy promoting healthy aging) lighten the load on our health systems, and increased resources channelled towards long-term digitalisation and ethical adoption of AI. The EU hopes that “future oriented” policy packages like this one, all about long-term planning, can counteract the “short-termism” that’s so endemic to European politics. (When vote-chasing means policy switch-ups every five years at most, it’s hard to convince Member states to commit to multi-generational plans.)
Despite all this, there seem to be two main areas where the European Commission concede that future generations will inevitably be worse off, no matter what policies they implement. The first is our climate; the second, our money. It’s intuitive that climate change is something that will disproportionately affect the lives of Gen Z and Gen Alpha; we’ll be the ones to face resource shortages, extreme weather, and a less hospitable planet in decades to come, and the European Environment Agency (EEA) reports accumulating economic losses in the billions thanks to extreme weather and climate events.
Our economic prospects, meanwhile, are shadowed by the “demographic transition”: people are living for longer and having fewer children. This means that there’s an increasingly large proportion of the population who aren’t working, or seeking employment, and who require more care and support from state health and financial infrastructure. As young people, the demographic transition is bad news for us: taxing young professionals like the social media superstar, Nicolas, is how states meet the needs of retirees. Additionally, governments with limited funds may need to choose between supporting pensioners and other publicly-funded projects which could otherwise benefit young people.
Civic engagement: the EU’s new game plan
It seems like the EU acknowledges, even in the wake of declaring a new intergenerational fairness strategy, that the meaningful change they can implement is fundamentally limited. It’s not exactly cheery reading. We should still welcome this new commitment to the principle of intergenerational fairness, however – if you’re young, European, and politically motivated, take this Strategy paper as a signal that more funding, attention, and opportunities are likely coming your way.
Schemes designed to combat voter apathy among young people are likely to see increased support on an EU-wide level in the next few years. Already, the Commission has committed to a number of initiatives, including setting up a Demography Forum, a new “Voices of the Future” Initiative, expanding their celebration of “Intergenerational Fairness Day” (November 16th), and incorporating a youth focus into existing programmes like the New European Bauhaus initiative and European Mobility Week.
Another long-running project is the Youth Policy Dialogues, a series of national consultations and forums that take place on an annual cycle – where young people have the opportunity to offering suggestions as to how the EU might best solve various general policy challenges in their home countries before the dialogues culminate in an EU-wide Conference. The goal of these dialogues is to develop concrete policy recommendations from young people which the EU can implement to show their commitment to young people and keep them engaged. These events are typically organised by Member States’ national youth councils; interested young people should keep tabs on their websites and social media feeds for opportunities to register for upcoming dialogues near them.
Meanwhile, Your Europe, Your Say – a two-day youth assembly made up of representatives from each EU Member State, candidate country, and the UK, designed to workshop the next EU Youth Strategy – has just wrapped up in Brussels. The priorities of the assembly were “active participation” and “democratic engagement”; though there’s certainly a long way to go on both fronts, the fact that the assembly received over three thousand applications to attend is probably a good sign.