Luxembourg Minister for Employment Nicolas Schmit, stated that; “While conservatives only talk about the issue, we have a concrete proposal. We need 10 billion euros to be ring-fenced in the EU structural funds so that we can start lifting 5.5 million young people out of unemployment. That is why we as Socialist and Social Democrat Ministers, will be pushing for an amendment to include a European Youth Guarantee”.
The PES ministers agreed to aggressively promote the need for the youth guarantee at national level. Successful schemes already exist in Finland and Austria and can be used as a model.
The Ministers strongly emphasised the need to go beyond the debate of women in company boards and to urgently address the real problem of millions of young women being without a job.
The PES will launch a major campaign to promote the European youth guarantee at the end of April. The campaign is called “Your future is my future – a European Youth Guarantee Now”.
For more information, please contact Brian Synnott, PES Media Adviser, +32 (0)474 98 96 75, brian.synnott@pes.org
