The European Youth Forum and other civil society organisations have developed a set of “Youth Guarantee Quality Standards” advising on how to support youths in their transition from school to work.
The Youth Guarantee is an EU commitment to ensure that young people will receive a good quality offer of employment, training or further education within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. Adopted in 2013, the Youth Guarantee has been a key EU scheme for supporting the employment of young people which were particularly hard-hit by the 2008 financial and economic crisis.
For many young people who find themselves stuck in cycles of insecure temporary work such as unpaid internships, low-paid or temporary positions, this initiative is failing to provide the much needed security and support of quality jobs. This needs to change!
Eurodiaconia joins the European Youth Forum and partners in the call for quality standards at European level to be developed to make the reinforced Youth Guarantee a success. Unfortunately, the Commission’s proposal falls short on this important aspect. While recognising the issue, the Commission only proposes linking the quality of Youth Guarantee offers to existing EU policies such as the “Quality Framework for Traineeships“. However, this will not be enough to tackle the very high rates of precarious work among young people – which is often low-paid and provides little employment or social protection.
For more information, please read the full text of the European Youth Forum’s “Quality Standards for the Youth Guarantee“.