The Youth Guarantee: why increasing the fund is not enough
Civitas, 7 August 2013
by Giles Hall
The rise in youth unemployment within the eurozone has been much publicised in recent times. Greece and Spain have in particular experienced rates as high as 62.5% and 56.4% respectively. The problem is seen as such a major issue that Angela Merkel called an EU summit early in July which resulted in additional funding being made available for the implementation of the Youth Guarantee.
The Youth Guarantee is a programme which aims to ensure that every young person, within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education, is offered a job, an apprenticeship or traineeship, further education or training. The sum of €6 billion originally put towards this programme was considered insufficient, that figure was increased to €8 billion.
The EU seems to have missed the inherent issue. The amount by which the fund is increased is irrelevant. So long as austerity exists within the eurozone any programmes such as the Youth Guarantee are of null effect. The superficiality of the Youth Guarantee as a legitimate solution is displayed in the very design of the programme. It is clear that without a certain level of growth in the economy there will not be the equivalent level of job creation needed to accommodate the unemployed youth of the eurozone.
As a result the Youth Guarantee does not explicitly guarantee a job because it would be doomed to failure if it did so. It instead aims to offer the youth more education and training if a job cannot be found (which will likely be the case). This is despite the fact that the current generation of unemployed youth are amongst the most educated in history. The problem is not lack of education or training, the problem is a lack of jobs.
The Youth Guarantee has to either exclusively guarantee jobs, or at the very least prioritise jobs above more education and training. The effectiveness of this would be greatly amplified by abandoning austerity in favour of growth. The EU must prioritise alternatives such as debt mutualisation, which would solve the sovereign debt problem whilst freeing the struggling southern European economies to focus efforts on the areas of much needed spending.