Reinforcing the Youth Guarantee is high on the agenda of the new European Commission. It is part of the Commission Work Programme for 2020. The initiative has been announced in the Communication “A Strong Social Europe for Just Transitions” of 14 January 2020. The aim of reinforcing the Youth Guarantee is to address the identified challenges in its implementation in 2014-2020 and to bring the common framework more up to date.
EUROCITIES has put together a technical report to showcase the role of cities in implementing the Youth Guarantee 2014-2020 programme and what is needed to further support them to deliver youth guarantee schemes.
The technical report shows that many cities have used the Youth Guarantee 2014-2020 with positive results. The programme has enabled the experimentation of ideas to address youth unemployment and it mostly had a positive effect on the pre-exiting measures. Cities used Youth Guarantee for tailored measures to fight youth unemployment, strengthen the integrated approach among employment, education and social services, and improve the cooperation between local stakeholders (e.g. education providers, employers, businesses, NGOs etc.).
Cities have highlighted that:
1. The Youth Guarantee’s resources for training, skills development and the social inclusion of young people must better target cities’ needs and should be used to capitalise on cities’ potential to address youth unemployment. The managing authorities should involve cities in shaping the priorities of operational programmes and in the subsequent strategic management of the funds. Involving cities in the design of these policies would maximise the local potential and making Youth Guarantee schemes more inclusive.
2. Youth Employment Initiative funds should be made directly available to cities for use in deprived areas where rates of youth unemployment are significantly higher than regional and national averages. Some cities are responsible for the Youth Guarantee but lack the resources to implement it and do not have direct access to the funds.
3. The European institutions and member states must work in partnership with cities to define, implement and evaluate youth employment policies and programmes. The level of cooperation between cities and other government levels on youth unemployment policies, and particularly the Youth Guarantee, is rather low. Cities cannot do it alone; a genuine partnership with national government is necessary to achieve better policy results.
EUROCITIES contribution to reinforcing Youth Guarantee 2021-2027
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