It’s been almost nine years since the Youth Guarantee was established in 2013; a policy that was developed and later approved as a result of the high youth unemployment rates that emerged all over Europe.
Millions of young people found themselves without work opportunities and the number of those who were neither working nor studying (NEETs) was rising. Under the rising pressure, the European Union (EU) developed the flagship policy that could help tackle that situation: the Youth Guarantee.
The new approach represented by the Youth Guarantee was the life line that a big part of the youth was waiting. Finally, an international institution like the EU said out loud that the future of the youth was a priority; that the continent would do its best to avoid leaving any youth behind. However, the intentions were not enough and such a goal could not be achieved through magic solutions. The EU did not have at the moment and still does not have the competence to implement the policy measures needed to deal with the problem of youth unemployment. Therefore, the Youth Guarantee could provide only the framework and the recommendations to be implemented by the Member States. In other words, it was more of a hope than a secured path to success.
A key aspect of the Youth Guarantee was its deemed novelty which underlines that, compared to other type of policies, the EU lacked the specific experience of implementation. In reality, however, it is neither a new policy nor a clearly structured one. On the one hand active labour market policies are not something new for the Member States. On the other hand, this top-down approach was creating a lax framework of implementation. The Member States have very different structures on how they implement active labour market policies. Some of them had centralised and other federated systems; some had no experience in focusing precisely on the Youth while some had departments specialized for them; some had no budget to implement those kinds of measures, etc.
The central Youth Guarantee policy had also to take into consideration that youth unemployment and the NEET rate specifically did not have the same impact upon different countries. Some countries were really in need of said policy, while others could deal with the problem by themselves without the need for a structured policy. The budget was a significant issue but not the only one. Sharing experience and good practices on the effectiveness of measures were also essential. The Youth Guarantee failed in transfering that knowledge.
During the first years of the Youth Guarantee’s implementation, the crisis deepend and the initial measures and budget were not enough. The numbers were not improving and it became obvious that the Youth Guarantee needed a boost to help more young people who were in need. So, the budget increased significantly and the measures were expanded. That seemed to work well: Youth unemployment decreased and the NEET rate was decreasing. The ensued pandemic of 2020, however, had a serious impact on the above rate. Nonetheless, the global nature of the crisis and the urgency of the health crisis transferred the focus away from youth unemployment and the Youth Guarantee. Yet, the pertinent rates remain high, especially in southern Europe and the initial interest on the impact of Youth Guarantee and the transforming motivation has withered away.
In the YOUTHShare project we have collected testimonials from key stakeholders that call for improvement in the Youth Guarantee scheme regarding measures, tools, networking and communication between stakeholders. After 9 years of implementation, there is valuable data available for the imporvement of the policy. Significant ascertainments include the need for better database management, providing better ways to share information and good practices between local, regional and national agencies or identifying the different needs of the youth in the main urban areas compared to the rural ones. Such change ranging from technical support to improvements in communication and the regional sensitivity show that there is space to make the Youth Guarantee better. And by improving the policy, we can retain the youth as top priority.
Author
Carlos Pesquera Alonso, YOUTHShare PhD candidate at UCAM Catholic University of Murcia
