Early formations of European youth policy: the role of the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (1952–1958)

This article examines the early formation of youth as an object of political intervention and policy-making within the process of European integration, focusing on the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) between 1952 and 1958. Drawing on a Foucauldian dispositif perspective and critical policy discourse analysis, the study analyses 61 documents from the Historical Archives of the European Union, including Assembly’s plenary debates and Social Affairs Committee reports. Three interconnected themes emerged from the analysis: the construction of a ‘young Europe’ associated with renewal and institutional legitimacy; the emphasis on education, vocational training, and mobility; and the incorporation of youth-related concerns into broader discussions of labor conditions, health, housing, and social welfare. The findings show that the discourse of a ‘young Europe’ and emerging youth-related interventions formed part of the same political rationalities through which youth gradually developed as a distinct field of institutional concern within the evolving political order of postwar European integration.