Youth on the Move – strengthening the support to young Europeans – in Florence

Brussels, 11 February 2011 - The European Commission is to organize, in Florence from 7 to 10 May, a Youth on the Move event within the first edition of Festival dell'Europa. The three-day event features a varied programme with projects being presented, as well as speeches and experience sharing that will provide the youth with a chance to discuss the issue of mobility and how to acquire the necessary skills to get a steady occupation. The focus will be on studying, learning, volunteer work, employment abroad, the tools the Europe intends to put to use and, of course, entertainment. The presence of Youth on the Move in Florence is part of a pan-European communication and promotion campaign that involved thousands of young citizens in the recent debates in Hungary, France, Germany and Poland.

Five million young Europeans are looking for a job; many of them do not make the most of the available opportunities for lack of required qualification of experience. Last 15 September the European Commission has started Youth on the Move, a flagship initiative bound to help the youth to acquire the skills, competences and experience needed to find their first job. Youth on the Move, falling in the new "Europe 2020" EU strategy, is comprised of 28 key measures aimed at bringing education and training closer to the needs of the youth and encourage the highest possible number of them to apply for EU scholarships to study or get training in a foreign Country. This should increase the employability of the youth and will make it easier for them to finally access the labour market.

Androulla Vassiliou, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, stated: "the measures that we have in mind are aimed at enhancing the quality of education and training in Europe in such a way as to give our young people the necessary skills for today’s labour market. We want to reduce the school dropout rates and increase the number of young students in tertiary education, in order to allow them to express their full potential. The EU has a higher and higher need for highly skilled, qualified and innovation-led youth in order to guarantee a prosperous future."

László Andor, European Commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion, added: "The search for a job is the main concern for millions of European young people; Youth on the Move will provide new momentum to improve, both at domestic and EU-wide level, the support to the youth, in order to help them to find a job, make a living and turn their projects into reality."

It’s time to act…

As we speak, too many young people drop out of school and too few of them actually take higher education, which is jeopardising the qualification base Europe will desperately need in the future.

Youth on the Move will contribute to accomplishing the main goal of the "Europe 2020" strategy, targeted at decreasing drop-out rates from 15% to 10% and increase the number of young people with a tertiary education or equivalent degree from 31% to at least 40% by 2020. The measures planned for Youth on the Move will also help the Member States to reach another ambitious EU goal, namely, reaching over the next decade an employment rate of 75% by making sure that young Europeans have the skills to face the employment challenges of tomorrow. A number of studies carried out for the Commission highlight that by 2020 about 35% of the working positions will require high-level skills, and 50% of them will require medium-level skills.

The financial crisis made it harder and harder for the European youth to find a place of their own in the labour market; the number of young employment-seekers has increased, moving from 4 to 5 million since the beginning of the financial crisis, while the current youth unemployment in the EU amounts to approximately 21%.

These challenges call for a well-planned action as well as political coordination in order to identify the measures to be taken in Member States and EU-wide. The Commission will provide support to the Member States to devise policies that provide support to those who are most exposed to unemployment risks, encourage young entrepreneurs and help to deal with the legal and administrative hurdles that stand between them and learning and employment mobility.

Several independent studies show that over 40% of the employers places very high relevance on the experience gathered during foreign study or work experiences, which do not only allow the youth to improve their language skills, but also to acquire other highly-appreciated qualities. The Commission boasts a time-honoured tradition when it comes to providing support to mobility through the scholarships it grants in the form of the Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig and Marie Curie programmes.

Youth on the Move intends to broaden the learning mobility opportunities of all European students by 2020.

Ten key measures

The Youth on the Move strategy in broken down into the following targeted measures:

• Launch of a dedicated Youth on the Move website, a sort of help desk where people can get information about foreign study and work opportunities, as well as information on EU scholarship programmes and individual rights. For this purpose the starting point will be paid by the existing initiatives, such as the PLOTEUS Portal on Learning Opportunities throughout the European Space.
   
• The pilot"Your first EURES job" project will provide consulting and help in looking for a job, as well as financial support to young employment-seekers who are willing to work abroad and to companies, especially small and medium size enterprises. The project will be managed by EURES, the network of European employment services, and will be fully operational in 2011.
   
• A mobility evaluation framework (mobility scoreboard)will serve as a reference tool to evaluate the steps forward taken in getting rid of the legal and technical hurdles that prevent learning mobility.
   
• The Commission, together with the European Investment Bank, is considering opening a European student loan instrument to help those students who want to study of get training abroad.
   
• The Commission will issue the results of a study focused on assessing the feasibility of a multi-dimensional and global university order of merit system for the purpose of providing a more comprehensive and realistic picture of the higher education performance as compared to the current orders.
   
• The Commission intends to develop a Youth on the Move cardthat will grant young people services and discounts.
   
• A new open position monitoring system at European level (European Vacancy Monitor) will provide a smart tool focused on open working positions throughout Europe, targeted both at employment-seekers and employment consultants. The system is expected to start by the end of this year.
   
• The new Progress European micro-funding instrument will provide financial support to young entrepreneurs, to help them to start-up of develop their companies.
   
• The Commission will encourage the Member States introduce a guarantee for the youth that will make sure that all young people find a job, get training of have a working experience of sorts no later than 4 moths after the end of their educational career.
   

The Commission will propose a European Skill Passport based on Europass (the European on-line CV) that will allow to trace the skills in a transparent and comparable way. Starting date: autumn2011.
 

Further information

Youth on the Move website:
http://europa.eu/youthonthemove

Video interview to Commissioners Vassiliou and Andor:
http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/video_prod_en.cfm?type=details&prodid=17479&src=1

Youth on the Move communication:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/yom/com_en.pdf

Youth on the Move: Citizens' summary:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/yom/cs_en.pdf