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MEPs Advise Four Month Limit on Youth Unemployment

The European Parliament has adopted a resolution on promoting youth access to the labour market and strengthening trainee, internship and apprenticeship status. A major element of the resolution is the 'European Youth Guarantee', which aims to ensure that young people throughout Europe do not remain jobless for more than four months. The parliament states that such a guarantee should be established to give every young person in the EU, who has been unemployed for more than four months, the right to a job or apprenticeship.

The resolution was tabled by the Parliament's youngest member, 25 year old Danish MEP Emilie Turunen, who sits as a substitute on the Committee for Employment and Social Affairs. Other areas of the resolution saw a call to set up a 'European Quality Charter on Traineeships', to ensure their educational value and to avoid exploitation. Proposals highlight that the charter should set out time limits, social security benefits and location appropriate minimum allowances for traineeships throughout the EU.

In recent years, the European Youth Forum strives to help strengthen the situation of young people in the labour market through developing good practices on the creation of jobs and decent working conditions for young people. Especially in times of crisis, traineeships must not replace real jobs, and should continue to be educational experiences. The European Youth Forum welcomes proposals for a charter to end exploitation of young people on the labour market through the creation of clear legal requirements for trainees.

Whilst the European Youth Forum sees the idea of a 'European Youth Guarantee' as an important step towards tackling youth unemployment in Europe, there is still much more that the EU could do to tackle the urgent issue of youth unemployment.

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