As second highlight of the Social Europe Network meeting, Nicolas Schmit, the Minister for Work, Employment and Immigration of Luxembourg, presented the final draft report on youth unemployment including 20 concrete policy proposals to overcome unemployment and precariousness of young people. This report was prepared by a special working group of social democratic experts during the past six months. To move towards action and make a real difference for young people, the PES will launch a comprehensive campaign on youth unemployment. The PES together with the member parties will campaign for a Europe-wide youth guarantee, ensuring that every young person must be offered a job, further education or work-focused training at the latest four months after leaving education or after becoming unemployed. The youth guarantee should be backed up by a European Youth Employment Strategy for job creation with at least 10 billion Euros of European funds annually. Further details on the campaign will be presented in the next weeks, ensuring that all PES activists and party members can actively contribute to reducing the current hardship of young people in Europe.
Finally, the PES staff presented an upcoming policy paper for a European Investment Programme, outlining how to raise the revenues for a 210 billion Euros annual investment programme and how to invest the money best, in order to re-launch the economy and to create a maximum of high-quality jobs.
