PPMI has submitted the final report of the study ‘Mobility of Young Volunteers across Europe’ carried out under the contract with the European Union’s Committee of the Regions. The research project started in October 2009 and focused on issues in youth cross-border volunteering within the European Union. Cross-border volunteering has been recognised as a means of non-formal education by the European Commission. However, since the Council Recommendation on the mobility of young volunteers across the European Union of 20 November 2008 is not yet implemented, in many countries young volunteers continue to face various legal, administrative and socio-economic obstacles.

The study showed that the rate of volunteering abroad among the European youth was very low: although university graduates make up the majority of young cross-border volunteers, international exchanges in higher education (‘Erasmus’) are much more established. The decision to volunteer in another country may be motivated by different reasons, but the most popular ones are the wish to know another country/ culture, to break out of the routine and do something unusual or take time to reflect on what to do next, to be challenged, to gain skills (especially proficiency in a foreign language) and to help others (this particular motive is often of primary importance in in-country volunteering). Young women are more likely than young men to go abroad for volunteering. The most important obstacle to the international volunteer exchanges is the lack of specific legal status of volunteers in many countries, which may cause hurdles with taxation, legal residence in another state (and immigration – for non-EU nationals) and other issues.

The survey completed is based on seven case studies. The first, ‘horizontal’ case study of the European Voluntary Service (EVS), a cross-border volunteering programme funded by the European Commission, helped to reveal the mobility trends of young Europeans for the purpose of volunteering and compared EU countries according to the numbers of sent and received EVS volunteers. Other six case studies reviewed selected EU Member States – Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden and United Kingdom – in terms of the prevalent perceptions of voluntary work, its legal regulation, traditions of volunteering abroad, flows of outgoing and incoming young volunteers, their motivation, benefits of international volunteering and obstacles that arise to young volunteer mobility.

In total, authors of the study conducted almost 100 interviews in the above-mentioned states and EU institutions. Legal as well as EU and national policy documents, publications on volunteering opportunities abroad offered by various organisations and secondary sources of information on volunteering were also analysed.