Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Personal tools
Sections
You are here: Home Breaking news States drag heels on billions to fight youth unemployment: EU

States drag heels on billions to fight youth unemployment: EU

20 December 2011, 18:21 CET
— filed under: , ,
States drag heels on billions to fight youth unemployment: EU

Laszlo Andor - Photo EC

(BRUSSELS) - The European Commission said Tuesday that EU states are dragging their heels on 30 billion euros ($40 billion) of funding that could reduce high European youth unemployment and get economies growing.

The EU executive said youth unemployment blackspot Spain -- where nearly 50 percent of those aged under 25 are officially out of work -- was among the worst offenders when it comes to spending European Social Fund monies on the ground.

Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso and social affairs commissioner Laszlo Andor set out measures to try and combat a situation where 7.5 million youths aged from 15 to 24 are neither employed nor in education or training.

They also want to target many early school leavers, boost apprenticeships and reform labour markets -- Andor saying policies advocated by Austria, the Netherlands and Germany should be "taken over by the others."

They say they will help finance 130,000 placements with firms next year in a bid to lower an average EU youth unemployment rate of 21 percent.

Andor said they wanted targeted action and predicted results similar to these claimed by advocates of micro-finance, small loans to generate small businesses at local levels.

Spokeswoman Cristina Arigho said there were "huge problems especially in Spain, Portugal or Italy trying to unblock this money and get it to the projects on the ground," whether for training school-leavers or teaching migrants a language.

Some 60 percent of roughly 75 billion euros allocated in EU social funding is normally directed at youth initiatives, she noted.

Youth Opportunities Initiative - guide

Document Actions