Lack of progress on youth guarantee discussed at EPSCO Council

This week (19th – 20th June) the EPSCO Council, bringing together ministers responsible for employment, social affairs, health and consumer policy from all EU Member States is taking place. The Council is discussing the country-specific recommendations drafted by the European Commission.

These recommendations show that in some Member States there has been a lack of progress in implementing the youth guarantee (Estonia, Czech Republic and Cyprus are cited) and in others, (for example Ireland, France and Greece) the implementation of the scheme is not on the right track. On Ireland, the Country Recommendation reiterates the importance of the jobs being offered to young people being of a good quality – something that the Youth Forum is also pushing for. For France and Greece, their plans do not fully comply with the criteria previously outlined by the Council. The Youth Forum urges the European Commission to increase its pressure on these countries to ensure that the youth guarantee is efficiently implemented.

The Youth Forum welcomes this monitoring by the Commission of how the youth guarantee is being implemented in 23 Member States as an important process to make sure that an effective youth guarantee becomes a reality across the EU. However, these recommendations are not enough to ensure proper monitoring of the scheme. It is extremely difficult to follow the implementation process. Furthermore, it is very disappointing to see the lack of transparency in the Commission’s monitoring. For example, it is very difficult to access Member States’ implementation plans.

An area that we have alerted the Commission to before and which is of increasing concern to us is the fact that Member States are not involving those that will actually benefit from the youth guarantee – young people themselves - as well as youth organisations, in the design and development of the youth guarantee. Up until now, we know from our member organisations across Europe, that engagement with young people has been haphazard, superficial and sometimes non-existent.

Issues that still need to be tackled at national level include the lack of active outreach to NEETs; not enough administrative capacity of public employment services; and lack of effective coordination and engagement with all the relevant partners at regional and national level. The European Youth Forum will continue to follow-up and monitor the implementation of the youth guarantee in order to see whether it is, in fact, making a difference to young people’s lives.

Key statistics on youth unemployment:

• Almost 8 in 10 young people have never heard of the Youth Guarantee (79%)
• In March 2014, the youth unemployment rate was 22.8% in the EU28
• In the first quarter of 2014 the highest rates of youth unemployment were seen in Greece (56.7%), in Spain (53.9%) and in Croatia (49%)

Read more: Allan Päll, our Secretary General, opinion on EurActiv