Commissioner Thyssen’s keynote speech on youth unemployment at European Policy Centre High Level Conference

Yesterday, 20 September 2016, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, Marianne Thyssen, gave a keynote speech at the European Policy High Level Conference on youth unemployment. In her speech, Commissioner Thyssen highlighted the results obtained by the Youth Guarantee, a scheme that aims at ensuring that all people under 25 get a good-quality, concrete offer for a job, apprenticeship, traineeship or continued education within 4 months of them leaving formal education or becoming unemployed. Since the start of its implementation 3 years ago, 14 million young people registered in the scheme, and 9 million took up an offer. There are 1.4 million fewer young unemployed in the European Union, and 700 000 fewer NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training). In light of these promising results, President Juncker announced in his State of the Union speech on 14 September 2016 to prolong the scheme. In addition, an extra €1 billion will be allocated to the Youth Employment Initiative, the main financial instrument supporting the Youth Guarantee, matched by €1 billion from the European Social Fund. In total, this will make it possible to support 2 million more young people until 2020 in Member States most affected by youth unemployment. Later this fall, the Commission will publish a detailed report on the overall as well as country-by-country results obtained by both the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative.