7 June 2013

Thanks to your engagement and commitment to fight youth unemployment, the European Youth Guarantee keeps gaining ground.

Now that we achieved the commitment from the EU to put forward the guarantee and to allocate 6 billion euros to it, we invite you to join campaign actions and to support your elected representative in making sure that the youth guarantee becomes a reality.

At EU, national and local level we are working hard to make this happen:

• The Social Ministers of the Party of European Socialist (PES) continue putting pressure on their conservative and liberal colleagues to make progress on strengthening the social dimension of the Union, namely by implementing the Youth Guarantee. French Minister Michel Sapin urged: "We should not waste any more time in our fight against youth unemployment. Creating more jobs for young people is an absolute priority. I believe the European Investment Bank could play a bigger role in providing the necessary funds for job-relevant investments."
  
  
• At the European Parliament

• Thanks to the action of Socialists & Democrats MEPs, the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs called for an enlargement of the scope of the youth guarantee. The MEPs are asking to extend the guarantee to young people up to 30 years (up from 25 years-old) and they also demand that EU funding is made available for all countries with youth unemployment rates higher than 20%.
• The President of the Socialists & Democrats Group in the Parliament, Hannes Swoboda has also called for an extension of the youth guarantee. In a letter to French and German ministers he defended that the youth guarantee should include everyone up to the age of 30 and that the funding for the guarantee should be increased. 
• The MEPs Catherine Trutmann and Udo Bullmann underlined that tackling youth unemployment is a fundamental step to fight the recession and poverty in Europe
  
  
• In Belgium, during her 1^st of May speech, Vice-Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx has made a strong case for a youth guarantee
  
  
• In Portugal, where youth unemployment touches 42.5% of young people, Socialist leader José António Seguro has publicly called for the guarantee to be applied without further delay
  
  
• In Ireland, Member of Parliament John Lyons is pushing for a youth guarantee pilot-scheme to be applied in Ballymun, after a request was submitted to Commission in October last year.

Furthermore, the International Labour Organization (ILO) latest publication “ Global employment trends for youth 2013” points to an alarming trend: 73.4 million young people in the world – 12.6 per cent of the population – are expected to be out of work in 2013, close to the levels reached at the peak of the economic crisis in 2009. In its conclusions, the ILO points the youth guarantee as a key measure to tackle the crisis and namely its consequences on young people.

The campaign for a European Youth Guarantee came a long way in putting youth employment at the core of the EU agenda, but this is not yet the end of the line!

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

Remember, your support is key to tackle youth unemployment in Europe!

COMING UP

Gümüldür, Turkey, 14-21 July
YES - Young European Socialists Summer Camp