Monday

11th Dec 2023

Data hole in EU plan for youth jobs

  • In three years 9 million young were helped by the EU's program to find a job or an education (Photo: CAMON)

Some 9 million young Europeans were helped by an EU scheme aimed at getting them into work or into a traineeship since its launch three years ago, the European Commission said on Tuesday (4 October).

Since January 2014, 14 million young people registered in a national "youth guarantee" programmes, the EU executive said in a first progress report.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Under the programme, member states should come up with measures to give young people aged under 25 years a "good-quality" job offer, continued education, an apprenticeship, or a traineeship within four months of leaving school or becoming unemployed.

The scheme is supported by the Youth Employment Initiative, launched in 2013, to support areas that suffer from high youth unemployment. It initially had €6.4 billion of resources for 2014-2018.

The commission now wants to boost the funding with an additional €1 billion from the EU budget, and another €1 billion from the European Social Fund.

The EU executive hopes this would help an additional 1 million young Europeans on top of the 9 million by 2020.

"We can't have a whole generation left behind, we have to do everything to give them a chance," employment commissioner Marianne Thyssen told journalists on Tuesday in Strasbourg.

She added that the commission cannot do this on its own.

Unknown situation

The impact of the programme is difficult to measure, as data provided by the commission itself shows.

It said that 40 percent of young people were in an ”unknown situation", with no data on whether they had entered the job market after participating in the scheme.

This is part of the reason why EU auditors criticised the programme last year , arguing it is not clear how many jobs were created and at what cost.

On Tuesday, ETUC, the European trade union confederation, while welcoming the additional funds proposed, also criticised the programme on that point.

"The commissioner talks up the slight decrease in youth unemployment, but the harsh reality is that long-term youth unemployment is on the rise. Emigration, traineeships leading nowhere and temporary contracts create youth unemployment figures that mask the true scale of the problem," it said in a statement.

According to data from member states collected by the commission, 35.5 percent of young people who participated in the scheme and left it in 2015 had entered employment or returned to education six months later.

Figures vary among member states because of the difference of quality of jobs on offer or the effectiveness of the local employment services.

The commission said 71.4 percent of people who took part in the programme in Ireland got some sort of a job or went into education, 64.1 percent in Italy, but only 37.7 percent in Spain, where youth unemployment is high, or in Hungary, where the "success rate" is 30.4 percent.

Thyssen said more efforts need to be made to reach out to those who are not registered with public employment services, are low skilled, or who have dropped out of school.

She added that the quality of services in member states could also be improved, but that while structural change in the employment services has begun, it will take a long time to bear fruit.

Fewer unemployed

Youth unemployment has become an acute problem since the euro-crisis, especially in countries that struggled through the events. There were 46.2 percent of young Spaniards out of work in 2015, 49 percent young Greeks, and 39.9 percent Italians.

"The economic crisis … severely hit the young," the Eurostat, the bloc's statistical office said in its analysis.

Facing disillusioned voters across Europe, commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said in his state of the union speech in September that he would not accept that Europe remains the continent of youth unemployment.

"I cannot and will not accept that the millennials, Generation Y, might be the first generation in 70 years to be poorer than their parents," Juncker said.

The commission said that there are 1.4 million fewer young unemployed in Europe than three years ago, and that youth unemployment has declined from its peak of 24.4 percent in the beginning of 2013 with 19.3 million young people out of work to 18.9 percent in 2016.

The commission claimed that the EU scheme helped ease the unemployment rate.

EU leaders pledge €2bn extra for youth scheme

EU leaders meeting in Berlin pledged an extra €2 billion for a youth employment scheme and said the European Investment Bank will lend €6bn each year to help small companies hire young people.

EU 'rebrands' youth corps

The European Commission proposes a €341-million budget to get unemployed people into volunteering activities or traineeships that “promote solidarity” in their own countries or abroad.

Analysis

How Moldova is trying to control tuberculosis

Moldova, Europe's poorest country, is working hard to combat tuberculosis. The country wants to be tuberculosis-free by 2030, at the same time as joining the EU. That's quite a challenge.

Opinion

The EU's U-turn on caged farm animals — explained

A European citizens' initiative — signed by 1.4 million people — saw the EU Commission promise to ban cages for 300 million farmed animals. Then the farming lobby got involved.

Opinion

'Pay or okay?' — Facebook & Instagram vs the EU

Since last week, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta corporation is forcing its European users to either accept their intrusive privacy practices — or pay €156 per year to access Facebook and Instagram without tracking advertising.

Latest News

  1. EU's 'do no harm' Libya policy hit by militia revelations
  2. Final fight over oil and gas phase-out at COP28 looms
  3. How EU must follow through on Iran womens' Sakharov prize
  4. COP28 focuses on EU failure to cut livestock emissions
  5. Final EU summit of 2023 plus rule of law in Spain This WEEK
  6. Why this week's EU summit must agree a new budget deal
  7. How Moldova is trying to control tuberculosis
  8. Many problems to solve in Dubai — honesty about them is good

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us