In late May the Youth Affairs Committee held an offsite session in Yekaterinburg. The event was initiated and organized by Pavel Zyryanov - one of the members of our Committee – whose constituency is in Yekaterinburg. The Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Aleksandr Misharin also took part in the meeting and instead of the standard 15-20 minutes he spent two whole hours with us…

And that’s because we were discussing some very important issues, including some that affect the Urals region.

Despite all the skeptical comments I had heard about Yekaterinburg before going there, I really liked the city. Sure, it’s an industrial city with the unhappy reputation of being the place where the Czar’s family perished. But there was nothing gloomy about it. What we saw was a clean, sunny city…hospitable, intelligent and friendly.

During the meeting we reviewed the development strategy for youth policy and held an exchange of views. Representatives from the Sverdlovsk Governor’s office and Government presented the findings of a study within the region on infrastructure for young people (availability and functioning of youth centres, clubs for adolescents etc.) One of the biggest issues these days (which I mentioned in my speech) is what happens to facilities that are built for young people, especially major sports complexes. Building them is one thing, but keeping them in working order is something completely different. Who should be responsible for these places? Their upkeep is often beyond the capacity of the local authorities, but if they make them commercial that doesn’t solve the problem of mass-participation sport.

This is something that affects many regions nowadays. Take Kazan, for instance, where they’ve built a lot of facilities for the 2013 Universiade: tennis courts, wrestling rings and so on and so forth. The Tatarstan authorities are already worrying about what to do with these places afterwards. Who will take responsibility for them and maintain the sports complexes and other facilities built for the Universiade? After all, it costs a huge amount of money. The same problem could apply to Tskhinval, where my charity is building a large modern sports complex.

Another issue I raised in my speech concerns the draft law on youth policy. The President has said there’s no need to create a major dedicated law on youth policy spelling everything out in fine detail and that the existing legislation is perfectly adequate.

I share this view, though some people think differently. But there’s still a need for a framework law on youth (literally just a few pages long) setting out the key points and definitions. My team and I have put together a draft and I proposed it for discussion by the Committee in Yekaterinburg. It’s entitled “On State Support for Youth” and I’ll write about it in more detail later. For now, I’ll just mention that it provides benefits to young citizens in the fields of education, jobs and business start-up.

Actually, I don’t much like the term “youth policy” - I don’t think there is any such policy. There is and should be a policy FOR youth. Anyway, the draft still has to be discussed, and if the Committee approves it it will be tabled for review in the State Duma. I think the Committee’s first offsite meeting went very well and it adopted some important recommendations that I’ll publish after they’ve been approved.