PRISTINA, Sept. 2 — Young people across the Western Balkans are increasingly acting as community leaders and changemakers on the path to EU accession, a role shaped by the region’s traumatic history and supported by EU programmes such as Erasmus+ and the Young Cell Scheme. Mila Mihajlović, a Young European Ambassador from Lipjan/Lipljan in Kosovo, argues these opportunities have marked the beginning of an era in which civic engagement is seen as a necessity for building a sustainable and just future.
The result, she says, is a generational wave of social, geopolitical and cultural awareness. Kosovo is home to the highest share of youth population in the region.
Mihajlović, who became an activist at age thirteen and focuses on human rights, gender equality and peace, notes that opportunities there have been closely tied to programmes on transitional justice, human rights and multiethnic tolerance. Those efforts, she says, have laid groundwork for informal reconciliation among young people from different communities. “Where formal politics could not reach, young people rebuilt bridges and sought justice,” Mihajlović said.
Her role as a Young European Ambassador provided an official platform and direct insight into how EU institutions support youth causes, with the goal of building platforms for engagement from Brussels to Pristina. The YEA network connects young people to opportunities curated around their interests and academic backgrounds, making engagement personally relevant and, in turn, inspiring long-term commitment.
Mihajlović herself organised a youth activity in cooperation with the Council of Europe Office in Mitrovica North, as a follow-up to the Block the Hatred 2.0 training she had attended. For all the noise around formal accession negotiations, the salient point may be generational. Mihajlović, an award-winning book author and youth engagement expert, contends that young leaders have been reshaping the reality of all Western Balkan countries by shifting standards on critical thinking, freedom of speech and civic awareness.
That, she argues, sets a new bar that countries must meet, weaving democratic values into the accession path itself. Western Balkan youth, she concludes, were never passive recipients of Europe’s future — they are its authors. The question now is whether the region’s formal institutions will keep pace with the standards its youngest citizens have already set.
