1 March 2013

A huge step thanks to you! European Youth Guarantee adopted by EU Social Ministers 

We have great news!

Thanks to your efforts in mobilizing against youth unemployment and thanks to the action of European Socialist and Social Democratic Ministers, the EU Social Ministers Council yesterday 28 February agreed to adopt a European-wide Youth Guarantee.

This major break-through was achieved because the Party of European Socialists (PES), PES Women and ECOSY worked together at all levels to get your voice heard. Thanks to this team work, the Irish Presidency of the European Union led by the Irish Labour Party made the youth guarantee a priority of its current presidency; the S&D Group in the European Parliament and the PES Group in the Committee of the Regions committed to this guarantee; Social Affairs Commissioner Laszlo Andor supported it; PES Ministers acted to put it in the EU agenda time and again and many other MEPs and MPs got together with national campaigners to call for a EU-wide youth guarantee.

We are now one step closer to make a youth guarantee a reality in Europe, but this is not yet the end of the line:

• Three weeks ago, after hard negotiation, PES Heads of State and Prime Ministers managed to secure a budget line of 6 billion euro to start work on the European Youth Guarantee
• Now that the Social Ministers have adopted the Youth Guarantee, we need to make sure we have the means to implement it over a sustained period. In order to make it a concrete policy, we need to increase the funding to 10 billion euros, so that we can bring the Youth Guarantee to all corners of the EU – and we need to ensure that we implement a Guarantee of quality.

So, what are the steps ahead?

• Making sure that a national youth guarantee is introduced in each Member State. The PES Youth Guarantee Guide illustrates how youth guarantees work and how they can be implemented in each Member State.
• Keeping the pressure to implement policies that can support youth guarantees. These measures include: programmes to subsidise the creation of jobs for young people, strengthening education systems and building up training systems based on dual education.
• Developing concrete plans to absorb and best use EU funding for youth guarantees. We need to make sure that governments present concrete proposals as soon as possible to actively use the EU funds available and to apply them in the best way to maximize the creation of new, decent jobs for young people.

After a year of campaigning, we will continue staging actions to make sure that a European Youth Guarantee is given the chance to be implemented.

Thanks to your cooperation, we are happy to announce that:

• Campaigning material is now available in Romanian (for other languages, please check the toolkit page
• High-level visits are helping to raise awareness to the need of a Youth Guarantee in Europe
• Spanish activists are mobilized to support the campaign in the ground.

Now enjoy checking our website and see all the updates from yesterday.

Join our campaign, organize and join events in your region and spread the word to your family and friends. 

COMING UP
Järna, Sweden, 7-10 March
ECOSY - Young European Socialists Congress

Budapest, 8-10 March
PES activists Forum