'The European Socialist family has just scored a major victory in the fight against youth unemployment. The PES Group in the CoR is proud to have contributed towards today's decision of the Council of Ministers to introduce youth guarantees across the EU', stated the President of the PES Group, underlining that the intense campaign of the Party of European Socialists, which the PES Group has fully supported, has been instrumental in securing rapid progress on this issue. Thanks to the Irish Labour Party, tackling the issue of youth unemployment has been one of the top priorities of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU.
See the PES Group website on youth employment
Since February 2012, all PES member parties and organisations have been active in the ‘Your Future is My Future’ campaign to establish an EU-wide Youth Guarantee, which should ensure that all young Europeans up to the age of 25 years, and recent graduates under 30, receive a good-quality offer of employment, continued education or apprenticeship within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education.
The PES Group in the CoR has actively taken forward the debate about decisive measures to fight youth unemployment, including the introduction of a youth guarantee, and it has fostered the exchange of best practices at local and regional level. Such practices, with a special focus on a different Member State every week, can be found here.
While welcoming the agreement of the Employment and Social Affairs Council to finance the initiative with EUR 6 billion, President Lambertz underlined that funds should be increased to respond to the needs of the 5.8 million young unemployed in the EU, through specific measures for the creation of new decent jobs for young women and men in the countries with the highest youth unemployment rates.
Karl-Heinz Lambertz also called for an appropriate legal framework to ensure minimum standards for the youth guarantees, including the quality of apprenticeship places and job offers, decent wages for young people and access to information about the new scheme. This was reflected in the Committee of the Regions' Resolution on a Youth Guarantee, the drfating of which was led by the PES Group. The CoR Resolution was adopted on 31 January 2013, some days after the adoption by the European Parliament of its Motion for a Resolution on the same subject, led by Pervenche Bères MEP.
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