Youth Forum addresses European, Latin American and Caribbean leaders on decent employment

Leaders from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean met in Brussels for the second EU-CELAC Summit this week, and the European Youth Forum was present to address leaders on youth employment.

At the EU-CELAC Summit (the EU-CELAC partnership represents 61 countries and over 1 billion people) the European Youth Forum’s Vice President, Joan Conca Domènech, addressed leaders from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean presenting the main messages from youth representatives on the importance of decent jobs for young people.

Leading up to the summit, the Youth Forum Board and member organisations participated in the CELAC-EU Youth Days in Ecuador over two days in April. This event focused on decent employment for young people, an important issue for both regions and concluded with an outcome declaration, which Joan then presented to the leaders at this week’s summit.

The Youth Forum was delighted to address European, Latin American and Caribbean leaders on the issue of youth employment which is having a huge impact across both regions. The preparatory meeting and the Youth Days were also a good opportunity for young people from both regions to jointly discuss and learn from each others' experiences, in helping each other to tackle the seemingly intractable issue of youth unemployment.

The Heads of State Summit concluded with a political declaration and a longer “Brussels declaration” as well as an updated action plan. The Brussels declaration makes a brief reference to youth employment, stating “we reaffirm our commitment to adopt policies that promote trade and investment between CELAC and EU countries, convinced that this will contribute to ensuring sustainable development and can foster economic growth and the generation of employment, especially youth employment, in both regions.” Whilst the Youth Forum is pleased to see an intent to tackling youth unemployment, this will not be achieved by trade and investment alone, and we call for concerted action by national governments and EU leaders to invest in the creation of jobs for young people and to make sure that these jobs are good quality jobs, as well as the implementation of the Quito Declaration from the CELAC-EU Youth Days.

The outcomes of the EU-CELAC Summit can be found here: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/international-summit/2015/06/10-11/.