How to guarantee quality jobs for youth?
Four years after the adoption of the Council Recommendation, how is the Youth Guarantee working? Is it effectively reaching out to all young people? Is it providing quality offers and long term solutions?
These are just some of the questions that were raised and debated this week by the European Youth Forum’s Youth Guarantee task force, who met on 3rd and 4th September. The task force, made up of representatives from 17 Member Organisations, examined the challenges related to the implementation of the Youth Guarantee, including the different approaches across Member States.
While the task force identified the Youth Guarantee as being a key driver for change, one main concern is that it should also set a high standard for quality. This means that the Youth Guarantee must have minimum standards and quality labels to provide quality opportunities for young people, rather than leading to more precarious jobs.
To ensure that the Youth Guarantee reaches this potential, the Youth Forum’s task force discussed the need for policy makers to be better informed about NEETs (those who are Not in Education, Employment or Training) to be able to identify what kind of services and guidance they need. Improving the Youth Guarantee also requires a deeper level of involvement by young people and youth organisations, for example, to provide advice on the accessibility of information and websites, to be part of labour inspections or to be trained to present the Youth Guarantee to other young people. Their expertise and ability to contribute is far beyond a one-time consultation!
The discussions made it clear that decent jobs are still a dream for young people. The most vulnerable young people are still being left behind and it is crucial that the Youth Guarantee does not start to run out of steam. It must be supported by more European and national resources.
The task force’s contributions will feed into a new European Youth Forum position paper on the Youth Guarantee. More updates will follow!
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