Allan Päll is the Secretary General of the European Youth Forum. This paper is a contribution to the EU- LAC Foundation’s Newsletter of March 2015 on the theme Youth Employment.
This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the EU-LAC Foundation.
Youth unemployment has blighted young people’s lives in Europe for several years now. Despite the fact that many European economies have started to recover, young people are still, in too many cases, not able to find good, sustainable long‑ term work. If they are able to find a job, it is too often “precarious” – meaning that they are on a short‑ term contract, or maybe they have no contract at all and have very little in the way of protection, wages or rights.
But what has been done to tackle this? There has been progress and positive steps made towards tackling youth unemployment, but these are too often piecemeal and progress varies hugely between different countries. One of these positive steps has been the development and implementation of the Youth Guarantee. This is the policy of offering any young person up to the age of 25 a good quality job, training, or re‑ training within four months of being made unemployed or leaving formal education. (read paper)