The European Court of Auditors is quite clearly unconvinced by the “Youth Guarantee”. After the first Report in spring 2015 criticising the role played by the Commission, the auditors published a new analysis on 4 April, which demonstrates that the Guarantee does not meet the expectations created at its launch.
The Youth Guarantee launched in 2013 seeks to help young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEETs). In practice, it calls on the member states to provide young people aged under-25 with an offer of a quality job, training opportunity or placement in the four months after they have left education or lost their job.
The Court of Auditors analysed implementation of the Guarantee over the 2013-16 period in Ireland, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Portugal and Slovakia. It concluded that none of these seven member states were able to guarantee all the young NEETs with the opportunity of accepting the offer that had been promised. As in 2016 (see EUROPE 11281), it highlights the lack of resources and absence of a clear timeframe and clear objectives. It should be pointed out that the guarantee is supposed to be based on the Youth Employment Initiative, a financial instrument that initially had budget of €6.4 billion (whereas the International Labour Organisation – ILO – provided an estimate of needs that would cost €21 billion a year). Although the Youth Employment Initiative was increased by €1 billion in 2016, it does in fact provide a modest contribution when compared to what is really needed, explains that report. Ms Iliana Ivanova, in charge of the report at the European Court of Auditors, stated, “More than 1 million young people aged under-25 in the EU were still without a job in mid-2016”. She added, “political leaders should ensure that the programmes devised to help young people do not create expectations that are impossible to meet”.
The report finishes with a number of recommendations for the European Commission and member states. These include the need to channel expectations by setting out the objectives, following up developments in this situation and improving data collection. It also calls for the Commission to ensure that Member States’ EU-financed measures to help young people find jobs respond to the young peoples’ needs appropriately. Member states are expected to draw up a comprehensive balance sheet of the costs generated by the Youth Guarantee and adapt the provisions to the funding available.
It should also be recalled that in October 2016, the Commission provided a rather positive balance sheet for the Youth Guarantee and Youth Employment Initiative, which it said had provided 9 million young people with an offer, mainly job offers, according to the communication (see EUROPE 11638). The report is available at:
http://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR17_5/SR_YOUTH_GUARANTEE_EN.pdf. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)