A conference called “The conservative politics for the young?” was held in the Palác Charitas by Young Christian Democrats in cooperation with Hanns Seidel Stiftung and International Republican Institute. The organisers were aiming to find the way how to raise awareness of the conservative politics among young people. During the conference, there were several speakers who highlighted that according to some, in the current politics the values are side-lined.
Markéta Filipová, the main organiser said the following: “The aim of the conference was to open the discussion about how the young people participate in the social and political life, how to make the conservative politics attractive to young people for example by the use of modern marketing. We wanted to find answers to what are the challenges that young people face and what are they interested in.” The conference was started by the former minister of foreign affairs, the MP Karel Schwarzenberg, the former chairman of the Senate Petr Pithart and the candidate to the Senate Pavel Fischer. Petr Pithart said the following about his vision of the conservative politics: “The concepts of timidity, sacrifice and service disappeared from the politics. We constantly talk about values but we do not know what they are.” Filip Chvátal, the chairman of the Young Christian Democrats agrees with him. He sees the politicians from the first conference panel as the political models whose ideas and stances are worth to be respected. In other conference panels which were of the same quality, there were other guests including some from foreign countries.
Among foreign guests there were a Slovak KDMS chairman Martin Trúchlik, Hungarian vice-chairman of Youth of the EPP Agnes-Zsofia Magyar and Boris Galic from the Austrian organisation Junge ÖVP. In the third conference panel there was also a debate going on about making the politics attractive to young people. The speakers were the programme director of the EU office of the International Republican Institute Miriam Lexmann, the chairman of the Young Conservatives Milan Vyskočil, the chairman of the Young Democrats Jiří Klindera, the chairman of the Prague section of the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren Benjamin Roll and Marie Štěpánová from the University Catholic Movement Prague.
The whole-day conference was attended by almost 100 people from the youth organisations and apolitical supporters of the conservative politics. The Young Christian Democrats are a youth organisation of KDU-ČSL. Its members are 400 young people between the age of 15 and 35 who together share the interest in Christian values and the desire to make the difference.