ZEW Lunch Debate in Brussels – Labour Market Economist Holger Bonin Casts a Critical Eye over the EU’s Youth Guarantee

In the EU there are currently more than 7.5 million young people who are neither in employment nor in any form of vocational training. The EU’s latest response to this issue is the so-called “Youth Guarantee”. According to the guarantee, Member States are charged with ensuring that young people under the age of 25 receive a job or training offer within four months of completing professional training or becoming unemployed. But is this the best way to go about tackling youth unemployment in Europe? The Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) will be taking a critical look at this issue at the fifth ZEW Lunch Debate which is to be held on 18 November 2014 at the Representation of the State of Baden-Württemberg in Brussels.

Viable strategies to help young people gain access to the European labour markets and to balance out social inequalities are now more urgently needed than ever, particularly in countries like Spain, Italy and Portugal experiencing extremely high youth unemployment rates. A recent ZEW study commissioned by the Robert Bosch Stiftung has identified some of the key conditions for successfully dealing with this issue. According to the researchers, in order to effectively combat youth unemployment, more jobs, in particular high-value jobs, for young people entering the job market, as well as sustainable labour market policy that avoids government job-creation programmes are needed.

“A general Youth Guarantee like the one recently introduced by the EU is not a good idea,” says Holger Bonin, head of the ZEW Research Department “Labour Markets, Human Resources and Social Policy” and lead author of the study. Background: The empirical data on which the study is based suggest that governments going on the offensive with job-creation programmes and nothing else does not lead to effective improvements. Rather, the findings of the study point to reforms of the labour market instruments and education systems in the EU Member States hardest hit by youth employment as being the most effective strategy. A discussion of these findings will be the focus of the upcoming ZEW Lunch Debate in Brussels.

Holger Bonin will be joined on the panel by MEP Jude Kirton-Darling from the UK Labour Party, unit head at the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission, Dr. Max Uebe, and Dr. Gerhard Dambach from Robert Bosch Italy.

Since March 2014, the ZEW Lunch Debates have been bringing together experts during their lunch break to put the current economic and political challenges facing Europe under the microscope. Events within this series, which take place in Brussels on a regular basis, provide a platform for critical, open and spirited debate.