In 2013 the EU Member States committed themselves to provide youth with a Youth Guarantee scheme. This “forward-looking and fundamental structural reform” aimed to provide a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within a period of four months after becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. For implementation of this scheme 6.4 billion euros were set aside for the Youth Employment Initiative (ec.europa.eu) (YEI) for the 2014-2015 period.

The Youth Guarantee has provided thus far 9 million of young people with a job offer or further training possibilities (according to the a European Commission report (eur-lex.europa.eu)) yet there is still 4.2 million of young people (aged under 25) in unemployment whilst 6.6 million are NEETs (not in employment, education or training).

For the upcoming period the offer should reach out to more young people, also those living in risk of poverty and exclusion to benefit from a good quality job offer or training. The recent Commission’s budget proposal recommends 2 billion euros to fund the scheme until 2020, which is less than one third of the budget invested in the 2014-2015 cycle of the Youth Employment Initiative.

To truly improve the situation of young people and offer pathways to employment, an adequate funding support to save the program from a decline should be offered. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that to accomplish the mission of fighting youth unemployment a funding of 21 billion a year is needed (see ILO working paper (ilo.org)(pdf), 2015). The costs of inaction is even higher – 153 billion euros a year, as estimated by Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions Report, 2012 (eurofond.europa.eu)(pdf)).

Lunch time debate

During the NEGOTIATE lunch time debate on 16 November 2016 we will look on the impact of the economic crisis on youth, and how it determinates the degree of early job insecurities.

Youth, policy makers, trade unions and researchers will share their standpoints on the Youth Guarantee, its current successes and handicaps, and share ideas how to support remaining the 18.9 % of young people who are still without jobs and training offers.

The debate will take place from 12:30-14:30, and is hosted by SOLIDAR Foundation together with NOVA-Norwegian Social Research (oslomet.no) in the framework of the Negotiate Research project. The event will take place in the new premises of SOLIDAR at Rue de la Pascale 4-6, 1040 Brussels.

More information, registration and programme can be found here (solidar.org).