Revisited fight against youth unemployment - ETUC Youth Resolution

Reinforced Youth Guarantee, Revisited fight against youth unemployment 

This resolution adopted by ETUC Youth on 2nd June 2020 aims at providing an analysis of the current scheme based on ETUC members’ experience as well as recommendations for further steps to reinforce the Youth Guarantee, also in the view of the new urgencies caused by the pandemic.

• ETUC members, as well as independent evaluators, identified major shortcomings when it comes to the implementation of the Youth Guarantee in Member States. The most relevant issues are: (1) low quality of the offers provided under the scheme; (2) timely intervention within the promised period of 4 months;  (3) the poor outreach strategies to offer the scheme to those young people who are furthest from the labour market (NEETs).

• ETUC sees the current situation, and the skyrocketing numbers of youth unemployment, as direct consequences of structural reforms and austerity measures introduced after the financial crisis in 2009.  The neoliberal policies, promotion of labour market flexibility, liberalisation of employment protection systems, and weakening of social protection systems and collective bargaining institutions caused an extreme shortage of decent job opportunities for young people. ETUC will oppose any similar so called ‘solution’ in the upcoming period.

• ETUC insists that all the recovery measures, as well as previously planned European programs, must have a long term perspective and put the well-being of the citizen at its centre. Massive investments into public services and a bailout for private companies must be accompanied by financial discipline (no dividend payment, no buyback of shares, no executive bonuses, no tax avoidance and no aggressive tax planning) and social responsibility (maintaining and creating employment with quality working conditions).

• The Youth Guarantee scheme has the potential to contribute to the creation of quality jobs and stability for young people particularly by creating synergies with other European initiatives such as: (1) European Pillar of Social Rights; (2) Skills Agenda; (3) European minimum wage initiative; (4) European Green Deal.  

• ETUC calls for a binding quality criteria framework jointly designed and implemented by the social partners for all offers under the Youth Guarantee scheme. The improvement of the NEETs rates in the country is not a primary objective as it is clearly offering only a partial picture. Under no circumstances, the Youth Guarantee should contribute to social dumping, wage dumping and precariousness of young people.

• ETUC calls for the appropriate financial resources from both national and EU budgets to be invested in achieving real integration of vulnerable young people in a fast-changing labour market. The European Employment Initiative should be brought back as a dedicated channel that allows a coalition of stakeholders (notably PESs, Trade Unions and NGOs) to implement crisis intervention as well as prevention.

The full resolution can be accessed and downloaded here.