by Carmen Pliego, Journalist, Spain
Is there still hope for young people? What can we do to tackle youth unemployment and create a better Europe? What should be changed? These are just some of the questions that most of European young people have in mind nowadays and to which nobody seems to find a solution.
Participants in the Ideas Lab celebrated today in Strasbourg during European Youth Event 2014 have been discussing about youth unemployment and have tried to find some answers. Here are some of them:
Stepan Ficik, from Czech Republic:
– Encourage language skills – “Right now we are in a globalization time and there are people from different countries and different cultures everywhere, so if you want to go working abroad, you should be more efficient in language skills”.
Katharina Weiler, from Germany:
– Same conditions for every job – “So that we are really able to do the job we want to do and not just the job we can do”.
– Reform of education system, focused on child education opportunities – “So that really every child has equal opportunities. That is something that most people always talk about but it is not really something that is going on right now “.
Elsa, Fanny, Melanie, Alexandra and Pauline, from France. Académie de Nice. Mission de Lutte contre la décrochage scolaire.
– Reduce discrimination during employment – “We propose reducing the discrimination existing in the labor market: between men and women, because of the ethnic origin, etc.”
– Reduce taxes for medium and small companies – “There should be lower taxes so that companies can employ more people”.
– Less delocalization. More work for young people and better balance between wages – “We should be judged according to our intellectual abilities and according to the work that we have effectively done, anything else”. “There should be more jobs for young people and people who are paid a lot should be paid less and vice versa”.
Fiona Livey, Raychel Scwartz and Markus Hoyer, students.
– Create greater links between education and job market: “That can take different forms but we have come up with examples like professional workshops, job centers, places where people can learn who to write a cv, mentoring, visiting to working centers, etc.”.
– Harmonization of qualifications – “Apart from Bologna system, there is also a point in harmonizing other degree qualifications so that if people decide to go abroad, they can be sure that their qualification counts equally”.
– Increasing mobility – “Increasing language training and having in and out countries support, like a body system so that people who emigrate are not alone but they have a body to which refer”.
The Ideas Lab project was launched in April as an online space where young people from all over Europe posted their comments on the five key topics of European Youth Event 2014: youth unemployment, digital revolution, sustainability, European values and the future of the EU.
Most popular ideas posted on the web regarding youth unemployment have been discussed today in Strasbourg and conclusions have been confronted with Marjory Van Den Broeke, Head of Press Unit at EP.
