Brussels, 11/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - At the meeting of the European Council on Thursday 14 March, the European Commission will take stock of the implementation of the European initiative to fight youth unemployment in eight Member States (Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia).
"We are not yet out of the crisis, as the unacceptably high levels of unemployment show, but we can see that the reform efforts of Member States are starting to bear fruit, correcting very important imbalances in the European economy", said the President of the Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, in his letter to the European Council which was published on Monday 11 March.
By the beginning of 2013, around 16 billion euros of European funding available for the period 2007-2013, including more than 12 billion for Italy, were redirected to fight youth unemployment more actively, according to the data published by the Commission on Monday 11 March ahead of the forthcoming summit. 780,000 young Europeans and 55,000 small and medium-sized enterprises are likely to benefit.
In Italy, the reprogramming of the European Regional Development Fund and of the European Social Fund was carried out in three phases: - end 2011: 3.7 billion euros was redeployed to support actions such as a professionalisation plan for young people in Sicily (452 million euros); - mid-2012: 2.3 billion euros reprogrammed to support child benefit (400 million euros), reduce school dropout rates (77 million) and stimulate entrepreneurship (50 million); - December 2012: 5.7 billion euros will support convergence programmes in Sicily, Calabria and Campania. (MB/transl.fl)