Better late than never would be a good way to describe the proposal presented this week by the EU Commission, according to which this year already 1 billion euro shall be made available within the scope of the Youth Employment Initiative. This will increase up to 30 times the pre-financing Member States receive to boost youth employment! Up to 650,000 young people could benefit from this measure – and one has to ask oneself why it has taken so long introduce it!

More than a year has passed since the European Parliament and the Council agreed the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) and allocated more than 6 billion euro to it. However, to date only a few million from the allocated 6 billion euro arrived in the Member States. Of course, the EU Commission is not solely responsible for this development; however, one should have anticipated right from the start that in particular Member States with the highest rate of youth unemployment would find it very difficult to pre-finance projects within the scope of the Youth Employment Initiative. The recent proposal of the EU Commission shall now solve the problem and ensure that funds will flow faster – a dictate of the moment.

Any delay by Council and EU Parliament in adopting the proposal would result in the fact that the YEI – in contrast to the call of the European Council for urgent action – would continue to be implemented at an extremely slow pace. The lack of easily available funds would seriously impact important and urgently needed political measures to integrate young people into the labour market.

Further information:

Website of the EU Commission on the Youth Employment Initiative