Employment in time of crisis – EU an Opportunity

Then how can we say the EU is an opportunity?

A couple of days ago in the Zlin region during the Czech Republic presidency, the EPSCO (Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs) was presented with a document in relation to the afore mentioned crisis from the perspective of youths. This document was finalised by the YFJ with the participation of its member organisations including two JEF representatives.

The document presented contained the main concerns of youths entering the labour market for the first time and tackle the problems of un-employability in youth due to frictions within the same market. In the long term this frictional unemployment must be reduced as much as possible. One answer to this is the promotion of professional guidance: thus offering orientation tools and better interaction between educational institutions and the professional sector. This will in turn ensure that young people make informed choices when deciding upon further education and their specific specialisation areas. Emphasis was also made on the need to give all the necessary support to novel entrepreneurial ideas by providing structures to foster the development of such businesses.

The Czech presidency sent a clear and bold message when choosing “Europe without barriers” as the slogan for these six months. Taking into consideration the timing of this presidency and the general situation as already explained before there was no better route to take then to emphasise the best of European solutions i.e. mobility. Through Mobility we can achieve a better match between the market needs and the market supply. Although member states have already adopted measure to foster this, further steps to encourage this mobility are required. Consequently, recognition of qualifications EU wide and better compatibility in the social security systems around Europe are needed. These should be in conjunction with a slimming of the beurocratic practices and complete lifting of restrictions for workers from other EU countries will give the union the strong position and new economic boost needed to move out of this crisis.

We hope that the Czech presidency keeps up to these expectations and move the block in the right Direction by making full use of this so called ERASMUS generation.