Rome, 14/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - At a meeting convened in Rome on Friday 14 June by the Italian prime minister, Enrico Letta, the Italian, German, French and Spanish EU employment and finance ministers sketched out the broad lines of measures to be implemented to overcome youth unemployment. Emphasis was placed on funding SMEs, greater coherence between national labour policies, and banking union. Discussion is expected to inform the conclusions of the next European summit devoted to this issue, on 27 and 28 June.
The lost generation that is being generated in Europe (the percentage of young persons without employment being double that of the general average) calls for an urgent response from the heavy weights of the European economy. Their leaders tackled the issue during a working lunch followed by a working meeting, with the four ministers setting out the broad lines of their ambitions at national and European level. Fabrizio Saccomanni, the Italian minister for the economy, said this was a powerful signal, based on an exchange of views and ideas for preparing forthcoming meetings, and in line with the Community method, as a follow-up to approval of the pact for growth and employment.
On the chapter relating to employment policies, the Italian employment minister, Enrico Giovanini, stressed it was necessary to strengthen training capacity and improve employment services, not only at national but also at supranational level. There must be a better exchange of information between employment services in order to move towards a European way of addressing the employment issue, he stated, saying it is also necessary to provide training and apprenticeship possibilities within a more coherent international framework. His German counterpart, Ursula von der Leyen, took the view that labour management services must be coordinated so that supply and demand in Europe works as it should. The “Youth Guarantee” was also broached, with ministers insisting that €6 billion should be set aside for this and used with the European structural funds.
Action in favour of youth employment, however, must find structural answers in the economy itself. The four finance ministers acknowledged how important it was for SMEs to contribute to youth employment and hence the need to open up new channels of funding for them. The idea of mini-securities, with simplified characteristics and guaranteed by the national or international banking institutions (EIB), is gaining ground. Also, €60 billion from the enlarged EIB budget should be focused on SMEs.
Fabrizio Saccomanni also said everyone hopes the EIB and the banks that provide incentive (national banks) will cooperate in order to contribute to the development of concrete initiatives to support employment. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble floated the idea that national banks and the EIB should meet as soon as possible. More broadly - and this is important for supporting SMEs - all undertake to move toward banking union. This idea should be brought to fruition as economic development remains dependent on the banking sector, Schauble confirmed. The French minister of the economy, Pierre Moscovici, underlined for his part how important reindustrialisation was for Europe, as advocated by the European Commission.
This mini-summit between four countries comes ahead of another meeting, on 19 June, between the same employment ministers in Madrid, before the European summit, and a bilateral Franco-German meeting on 3 July. (MD/transl.jl)