1. Anita VELLA, European Commission, EMPL B1
Youth employment
The Youth Guarantee and YEI three years on
Anita VELLA, European Commission, EMPL B1

2. "The European Union should not only preserve our European way of life but empower those living it. I cannot and will not accept that Europe is and remains the continent of youth unemployment"
YG Communication:
Young people are the future of Europe. Our mission is to create the conditions for ensuring their optimal development and providing them with the best opportunities to be active on the labour market and in society. But young people were also the hardest hit during the crisis and according to a recent Eurobarometer, half of Europe’s young people feel excluded and marginalised from participating meaningfully in social and economic life.
Since 2013, the Union and its Member States have engaged in an ambitious strategy to reduce youth unemployment. Following a proposal from the Commission, all Member States adhered to the establishment of a Youth Guarantee, which is a political commitment, in the form of a Council recommendation of April 2013, to give every young person a good-quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. The establishment of the Youth Guarantee went hand-in-hand with policy guidance and financial support from the EU level, notably through the Youth Employment Initiative.
President Juncker, 2016 State of the Union speech

3. Youth Guarantee

4. Three years on from the launch of the Youth Guarantee…
1.4 million fewer young unemployed in the EU
There are almost 900,000 fewer NEETs in the EU
The employment rate for young people has started to rise again
1.4 million young people directly supported by the EU (YEI)
Such trends should be seen in the context of cyclical factors, yet the YG played a role by supporting demand-side measures and increasing opportunities for young people.
YG Communication:
Three years on from the launch of the Youth Guarantee, there are 1.4 million fewer young unemployed in the EU. (NOT THE SAME 1.4 M of YEI!!!!)
By 2015, annual youth unemployment rates had dropped by 3.4 percentage points to 20.3 % and the number of people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) had decreased by 1 percentage point to 12 % on average in the EU.
Youth unemployment and NEET rates are very uneven across the EU but both rates have decreased in most Member States. During the same period, unemployment dropped faster for the population of young people than for the adult population, in the EU as a whole as well as in many Member States. This suggests that the structural reforms of labour market, education and training policies supported by the Youth Guarantee have made a difference.

5. The Youth Guarantee has become a reality across the EU…
YG Communication:
The Youth Guarantee has become a reality across the EU. 14 million young people have entered Youth Guarantee schemes since January Around nine million young people took up an offer, the majority of which were offers of employment. Almost two thirds of young people who left the Youth Guarantee in 2015 took up an offer of employment, education, traineeship or apprenticeship.

6. Policy reforms and innovation in policy design
Break down silos across policy areas and build partnerships
Apprenticeship and traineeship reform
Public employment services > improved targeting of services
Emphasis on early intervention and non-registered NEETs
YG Communication:
The Youth Guarantee has helped to break down silos across policy areas and build viable partnerships. Coordination among the employment, education and youth policy sectors has been heightened, most notably as a result of the impetus created by Member States’ Youth Guarantee Implementation Plans. New partnerships were set up with social partners and youth services, including youth organisations. In particular, youth organisations have been involved in the design and delivery of national Youth Guarantee schemes, although to varying degrees across Member States.
Significant apprenticeship and traineeship reforms have helped better prepare young people for labour market needs and build relevant skills, but have also helped strengthen business community engagement. Half of the Member States have undertaken — or report plans to undertake — legal changes to align their national framework with the Quality Framework for Traineeships following its adoption in Nearly all Member States have taken action to improve the quality, supply, or attractiveness of apprenticeships, in the spirit of the European Alliance for Apprenticeships launched in July Engagement from the business community was crucial and led to new commitments, for example under the European Pact for Youth .
The majority of public employment services have improved the targeting of their services and have expanded their existing service offer to young people; two-thirds of public employment services established specific targets for their youth-oriented services. Particular emphasis has been placed on reorganising structures and increasing the personalisation of counselling. Staff capacity has also been reinforced, with specific training provided by over half of public employment services in In addition, Member States have broadened the scope of support through short study or work placements, and pathway approaches towards the hardest to reach.
The emphasis on early intervention and non-registered NEETs highlighted existing gaps in service delivery and ensured a new focus on outreach. Most Member States encouraged young people to register with Youth Guarantee providers and two-thirds of public employment services engaged in outreach work when implementing the Youth Guarantee. Increasing awareness, accessibility and the range of services was instrumental in this regard, through the development not only of online registration and targeted campaigns but also of one-stop-shops, mobile or decentralised services and proactive work with a broader range of partners. While results are becoming visible on the ground, Youth Guarantee schemes have not yet reached all young people who have become unemployed or left school.

7. The YG as a driver for reform and innovation in policy design
YG Communication:
A large number of labour market reforms targeting young people were adopted in most Member States in The Youth Guarantee helped not only to scale up both demand- and supply-side measures for young people but also acted as a powerful policy driver for reform. In doing so, it significantly facilitated structural reforms and innovation in policy design, promoting investment in human capital and upward convergence across Member States.
Many Member States already had in place an array of relevant youth employment policies prior to the adoption of the Recommendation. However, the Youth Guarantee shifts the focus to early intervention and non-registered NEETs thus affecting policy design and delivery. Moreover, by requiring services and programmes to be brought together and delivered within a specific timeframe and through systematic partnerships the Youth Guarantee has been a driver for change in many Member States. In , Member States adopted a total of 132 labour market reforms targeting young people, highlighting a strong focus on youth employment policies
Member States can be divided into three groups according to the degree to which the Youth Guarantee has acted as a driver for reform. This grouping takes into account the different starting points in terms of institutional context and macroeconomic conditions of Member States at the time the Recommendation was adopted
Group A (accelerated reform): the Youth Guarantee has provided a new impetus and has accelerated policy developments in a number of Member States, especially in those facing major challenges and receiving significant EU financial support (BE, BG, FR, HR, HU, IT, LT, LV, PL, PT, SI), though stages of implementation might differ.
Group B (reinforced policy framework): the Youth Guarantee has helped to reinforce well-established policies through the scaling-up or adjustment of existing measures in Member States that already had comprehensive instruments in place that are broadly in line with the Recommendation (AT, DE, DK, EE, FI, IE, LU, MT, NL, SE, UK).
Group C (to date, reform is more limited): changes were more limited as a result of a variety of factors including a lower prioritisation, delays or discontinuity in key measures, or a focus on pre-existing schemes (CY, CZ, EL, ES, RO, SK).

8. Acceleration and broadening the YG: lessons and challenges
Full and sustainable implementation > Continued political commitment and financial support
Better engaging with non-registered NEETs and the low-skilled
Number and quality of offers:
Cooperation between education providers and employers
Better mechanisms to ensure that young people receive offers of high quality
YG Communication:
Ensuring full and sustainable implementation
Continued political commitment and financial support for the Youth Guarantee as a long-term, structural reform is essential in order to reap the benefits of the work carried out so far. Full-scale implementation is still recent in a number of Member States, as many measures have required substantial reforms and broad partnerships: upscaling of initiatives to ensure full coverage should be speeded up in order for the Youth Guarantee to reach its full potential. Stepping up implementation will also involve pursuing monitoring efforts, streamlining existing data collection processes, overcoming technical obstacles and improving the quality of data collected under the common indicator framework.
Better engaging with non-registered NEETs and the low-skilled
The Youth Guarantee must benefit all young people and all young people must benefit from the first signs of recovery. Yet, despite significant efforts by Member States to improve outreach, young people in the most vulnerable situations, including the low-skilled and non-registered NEETs, are under-represented among beneficiaries.
Addressing this challenge will not only require a more efficient outreach approach, but also a broadening of the range of interventions proposed within the four types of Youth Guarantee offers. While the four-month time limit is essential to ensure swift activation, young people facing multiple barriers often need complex, lengthy and individualised interventions before being able to take up an offer. Broadening the set of continued education offers to include pathway approaches and intensified support delivered by a range of partners is necessary to better address their needs.
Strengthening capacity and improving the quality of offers
Greater internal coordination and capacity building will consolidate promising partnerships and improve delivery. Implementing the Youth Guarantee has strengthened cooperation among public institutions, and with stakeholders. However, its wide scope also exposed pre-existing gaps. The process is driven primarily by labour ministries, with a weaker involvement of education and/or youth authorities. Besides, the capacity of partners, and in particular public employment services, has faced challenges in view of the large range of tasks to be undertaken.
Strengthening cooperation between education providers and employers remains key to expanding the pool of good-quality offers for young people. Although Member States have sought to secure employer engagement, their involvement in practice has been rather limited so far. This results primarily from challenging macroeconomic conditions as well as from difficulties in matching labour demand and supply, weak involvement in the design and delivery of schemes, and limited structured cooperation with public employment services. Greater employer involvement would also improve anticipation of future skills shortages.
Introducing better mechanisms to ensure that young people receive offers of high quality is essential. Challenges relate to the short duration of offers and the fact that offers of continued education do not always ensure that a learning outcome has been achieved (e.g. a minimum level of basic skills) or lead to a recognised qualification. Other challenges relate to the lack of regulation of traineeships offers in the open market as regards transparency of hiring, duration and recognition. While variations in the quality of offers depend primarily on the national labour market, they also result from whether and how ‘good-quality’ offers have been defined and provided in practice. For instance, where a good-quality offer is directly or indirectly defined, it generally addresses sustainability of the outcome and the personal satisfaction of the young person. Only a few Member States have set up minimum quality criteria, including for the purpose of monitoring the Youth Guarantee.
The Commission, together with the ILO, is working on the identification of the main elements that constitute a quality offer under the Youth Guarantee. This is part of the Commission response to the Court of Auditors recommendation to promote a set quality attributes for Youth Guarantee offers. Moreover, the Commission will explore the possibility of discussing standards for quality criteria in the context of the work on Youth Guarantee monitoring in EMCO.

9. Report on YEI implementation progress
Implementation – slow start but speeding up
Challenges for YEI implementation:
MS must complete the designation of authorities process
Ensure capacity of national Public employment services and public authorities responsible for YEI OPs
Policy challenges:
Better outreach to the most vulnerable NEETs (low-skilled)
Strengthening capacity and institutional cooperation
Improving quality of job and training offers

10. Youth Employment Initiative

11. Extending the YEI
Additional EUR 1 billion in current prices to supplement the initial YEI specific allocation
To be matched by EUR 1 billion from the ESF
=> overall effect is at least EUR 2 billion
Eligibility rules remain unchanged (e.g. eligible regions, criteria for breakdown of resources and target group)
Minimum modifications to the legal framework required

12. Key planned steps
Political agreement on MFF and Annual Budget 2017 adopted (end-2016)
COM proposal for amended budget 2017 => available global margins for commitment for YEI increase (early 2016)
Amendment of CPR (spring 2017)
Amendment of PA and OP (summer-autumn 2017)

13. Thank you!