Brussels, 22/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - As the eurozone gradually approaches the symbolic point of 25% of young people under the age of 25 without employment, the EU Council, further to a recommendation from the European Commission, managed to reach a political agreement end February on the setting in place of a “Youth Guarantee” mechanism. All agree it is necessary to “do something” and the guarantee, the first measure, was favourably welcomed. It nonetheless gives rise to many questions, including with regard to cost, implementation and feasibility of application throughout the EU.
The picture given of the Youth Guarantee by several experts on the occasion of a public hearing of the employment and social affairs committee of the European Parliament, on Wednesday 20 March, showed that seeking to illustrate this mechanism is more like abstract art than figurative art. Behind a principle that looks simple - i.e. to give all young people under age 25 a quality training course, job, complementary training or apprenticeship - there lies a major institutional challenge, the magnitude and complexity of which makes one fear that the message that European leaders wish to pass on to the young (that of the EU providing a rapid solution to the unemployment of young Europeans) will be practically impossible to bring about in the short term.
The term “guarantee” chosen for this mechanism thus left Professor Jaroslaw Gorniak, from Krakow Jagellonne University, perplexed. It is perhaps a risky choice as it creates the illusion that all young people (who are neither students, employees or trainees) will have a job proposal or be offered a quality training course. Like the Parliament rapporteur for this mechanism, Joanna Katarzyna Skrzydlewska (EPP, Poland), Professor Gorniak shed some light on a simple fact - that without economic growth there will not be more jobs and it will therefore be difficult to offer anything at all to young people, let alone speak of quality job offers, as the Youth Guarantee stipulates.
One might recall that Okun's Law quite simply states that there is a linear relationship between the rate of growth of GDP and variations in the rate of unemployment. The critical threshold is estimated at 3% of growth. Above that, the rate of unemployment will fall. The Commission expects growth to be no more than 0.1% in 2013 for the EU, and the eurozone is expected to experience contraction of 0.3%. As Peter Matjasic of the Youth Forum has pointed out, the rate of youth unemployment is at the same time twice as large as the average of the active population for decades. He says that this illustrates chronic under-investment on the part of certain member states towards the young. This also shows, however, the inefficiency of active labour market policies that make up the basic structure of the guarantee mechanism for this category of the population, explained Professor Gorniak.
The secondary problem, as it again needs a favourable economic situation, is to address the issue of inequality between supply and demand on the labour market. Although it is difficult to act on demand without increasing public deficit, the public authorities can do something about the skills that the young have to offer. But this also has a cost and requires adjusting education and vocational training schemes, stressed Skrzydlewska. If there are no jobs available, the mechanism entrusts the public authorities with proposing a course or quality apprenticeship scheme. The Commission sets the requirement of “good quality” but it is first and foremost necessary to create jobs or training schemes, which is of course more complicated, said Professor Gorniak. Trainee courses and training have the final objective of facilitating transition to the labour market, which brings one back to the point of departure and to the problem of there not being any jobs on offer. So, to sum it up, without growth, it is a vicious circle.
In its proposal, the Commission shows that it is aware of the challenges it has to face. On one hand, all the Youth Guarantee does is put the measures being promoted (“employment package”, “youth employment package”) into a far broader context and into the general objective stated by member states at each European Council that there must be a return to growth. On the other hand, it has provided member states with working documents that describe exhaustive provisions with a view to setting a guarantee mechanism in place, based on the best examples of this.
Some MEPs share the fear that this provision is, at the end of the day, so exhaustive that, in the member states where even the premises of such a guarantee do not exist, it will be difficult for the guarantee to be established rapidly, all the more as those states must also face up to considerable budgetary difficulties. “This Youth Guarantee is a very important initiative, but I have worries that we are now raising the hopes of young people very high”, without being able to guarantee that the member states will be able to do what they say, said Sari Essayah (EPP, Finland). (JK/transl.jl)