Who we are?

The Union of the Egyptian Liberal Youth (EULY) is a civic not-for-profit organization seeking to create a kernel for a lobbying group that promotes the principles of political, economic and social liberty in order to redefine the relationship between the individual and the State in Egypt. The Union is based organizationally on open membership to Egyptian youth without discrimination on the basis of religion or sex, and intellectually on the concept of individual liberty as established by the enlightenment literature and its applications in the modern societies.

In our opinion, the current crisis in Egypt can ascribed to the fact that the Egyptian State has become a patriarchal State, meaning that it assumes the role of the patriarch in its relationship with the individual: absolute power and unlimited responsibility. In such a model, individuals fall victims to the inappropriate and disproportional intervention of the State in their lives, whereas the State fails to fulfill its economic and social commitments to the individual, that which ends at a political crisis similar to the one we live in detail and on daily basis in each and every village, town and city in the Nile valley. We believe that there is no escape from such a crisis but by the redefinition of the nature of the relationship between the State and the individual from this Patriarchal Model to the liberal one. The State as we see it is merely an instrument with a clear and definite use: the enforcement of the law. We understand the law to be a contractual relationship between all the individuals living inside the borders of a state; a relationship that is established and redefined through representational democracy. The State's capacity to enforce the law is naturally dependent on its ability to monopolize the use of violence on its territories, prohibiting any person or entity – whether native or foreign – from applying violence to any other. This monopolizing nature of the State makes its relationship with the individual unbalanced, and consequently the liberal concept of the Minimal State was established: a State that intervenes under the strictest conditions and to undertake the necessary tasks that no one else would undertake. The responsibility for the administration of most of the aspects of human activity therefore falls on the shoulders of the individuals and their voluntary associations (collectively called civil society).

Our mission as established goes way beyond the defiance of the practices of a repressive political regime or a conservative society; it is rather an attempt to set free the Egyptian enlightenment-modernization project, to liberate it from the paws of the totalitarian forces, whether those that currently control the Egyptian State, or those that hope to take it over in the near or far future. Our path towards this liberation is to address the individual, not as a unit of a whole, but as an end in himself or herself; to prepare the welcoming environment for the growth of the Egyptian civil society (in the broader sense) and to take the Egyptian liberals out of their nutshell to an open dialogue inside and outside Egypt .

EULY's Framework for the Role of the State

• The State should, above all things, guarantee the sustainability and universality of its legitimacy, i.e. that it remains standing by the consent of all the individuals residing inside its borders.
• The State has to monopolize repressive power (violence). No person or entity, whether native or foreign, should be allowed to apply repression or call for the application of repression on any other.
•  The State has to monopolize the drafting (by its legislative branch), issuing and execution of the law (by repressive force if needed).
• The State has to monopolize the issuing of money, and run fiscal policies within the limitations of the law.
• The State has to conduct or supervise the conducting of the legal affairs of natural personalities who do not have a legal personality like minors and the mentally ill.
• The State should supervise over its borders, and see that no one and nothing enters its territory against the law.
•  The State may take over and should be ready to take over further tasks in cases of emergency, like epidemics, natural disasters and foreign invasion, taking into consideration that this role should automatically and immediately end when the emergency status is over.
• The State should levy taxes to spend on these tasks
• The State should not provide for, supervise over or interfere with religious practice, economic activity, education, healthcare, transportation or communication except for those who do not enjoy legal personality, and unless this is in violation of one of the previous points (e.g. in cases of illegal conduct, threats to national security or providing a minimum of education for minors)

 

EULY was founded in September 2007 as a civic not-for-profit company