The European Youth Forum welcomes the European Commission's 'Agenda for New Skills and Jobs' initiative which aims to step up efforts to aid young people to obtain the relevant skills for growing employment sectors. The initiative comes timely, as it is widely acknowledged how young people have been disproportionately affected by the crisis and how the transition from education to the labour market is malfunctioning.
Until the high level of skills mismatch is solved through the formal education system, young people in Europe will continue to leave formal education without the necessary competence and qualifications to enter the labour market successfully and to be fully active citizens. Quality guidance to encourage informed and responsible choices of education paths should therefore be made much more easily accessible.
"There cannot be a competitive, inclusive and socially sustainable labour market in Europe unless we ensure that young people are an active part of it" stated Tine Radinja, President of the European Youth Forum. "Included in the labour market and equipped with the necessary skills" he continued, "young people can improve not only their private life chances, but positively contribute also at local, regional, national and EU levels."
Importantly, youth organisations often play a central role in providing new skills to many young people, but are not insufficiently recognised. Recognition instruments have to be therefore developed to include Non-Formal Education learning outcomes. A European Skills Passport could be a good step towards this, alongside Non-Formal education being included in education policy, to ensure it is regarded as a proper educational field.
Moreover, the initiative has the potential to acknowledge the role of quality internships in the transition process through encouraging quality partnerships between educational institutions and employers. Furthermore, the European Youth Forum sees the new flagship initiative as the opportunity to finally address youth entrepreneurship in a structured manner by using concrete tools to allow young people to consider entrepreneurship as a real option.
As the latest edition in a series of the European Commission 'flagship initiatives' in the framework of the 'Europe 2020' strategy, the European Youth Forum now expects the 'Agenda for New Skills and Jobs' to form synergies with other initiatives, especially in the field of youth and education, to allow young people to truly unleash their potential. These should be also be strongly linked to other on-going processes in the field of education such as Education and Training 2020 strategic framework and modernisation of universities.
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