Topic: Towards a Geography of Young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs)in the Mediterranean European South: Policy Evaluation, Regional Resilience and Social Economy
ABSTRACT
The spread of the NEET phenomenon (young people Not in Employment, Education or Training) in Europe has led to the EU policy of the Youth Guarantee scheme, across the member-states. In that framework, young people are assisted in receiving a quality employment offers, continued education and apprenticeship or traineeship within a period of four months, after becoming unemployed or leaving formal education.
Focusing especially on Youth Guarantee, the most emblematic initiative on employment and youth integration, this paper will present NEETs expansion between 2008-2018 in correlation to the results of the Youth Guarantee, critically evaluated for the countries of the European Mediterranean South. This paper reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the Youth Guarantee scheme through literature review and impact assessment analysis regarding its results specifically on employment and education, coupled with the geographical distribution of the expansion of NEETs and NEETs coverage in the Youth Guarantee scheme, over the years. The paper identifies positive results on employment and education and stresses the low impact of Youth Guarantee in the severely hit countries by the recent economic crisis and recession
The present study reflects findings from the research project “A Place for Youth inMediterranean EEA: Resilient and Sharing Economies for NEETs” (YOUTHShare) which is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment.
Key words: NEETs, Youth Guarantee, impact assessment, Mediterranean EU South, EEA and Norway Grants
Effie Emmanouil, Michalis Poulimas, Ioannis Papageorgiou and Stelios Gialis
