Finally in Stockholm after quite many days on the road. Came home yesterday from Cyprus, where we met for one of the last board meetings of this mandate. Beside the meeting, we had the opportunity to attend the opening session of the General Assembly of the Cyprus Youth Council, where some familiar and persistent challenges of young people were addressed, namely the question of youth employment. It is clear that the next two years will be very, very important in this regard. The economic crisis has put the spotlight on some structural, and maybe cultural, problems in our societies. One question I have been asked repeatedly is: why should young people be put into special focus in all this? Is it not true, that everybody, regardless of if they are young or not, face these problems? Of course, young people are not the only ones facing challenges in a time where the economic model we are used to has transformed into something of a question mark. What we need to focus on is the transition period from education to work-this is a period in which we can say that young people are particularly vulnerable: to enter the labour market without previous experience is difficult. Then, what lies at hand is the internship option. Internships can be valuable experiences if the educational aspect is there, and if they lead to a "real job". Now, in many countries what happens is, as we know, that many get locked into a vicious circle of repeated unpaid or very badly payed internships. In a liberal market economy, you should be properly compensated for your work-which is also crucial for keeping the wheels of the economy rolling. It is quite clear that this is a problem where an agreement between governments and social partners needs to be reached, setting out clear rules for internships.
Apart from the internship question, there is the wider problem of how a flexible labour market could also be secure. Flexibility per se is not a problem-it is the lack of a safety that is. The social security systems are often not adapted to this new reality-thus we need a rights based approach to social security, making young people less vulenrable in a situation like we are experiencing now. The safety net should also be designed to be encouraging; options to passive unemployment should be provided, which is why the idea of a youth guarantee is appealing. A youth guarantee, meaning that the state provides an opportunity to for a young person to have a job, internship or the possibility to further education after a short period of unemployment, is an idea to be taken seriously. As we know, the paradox in all this is also, that our generation is very well educated and, to use commission language, has a huge potential. To use this potential, young people need to be better at taking initiatives, a way of thinking in which entrepreneurship is seen as a real option has to be encouraged.
These are, to say the least, huge questions, and I don't expect easy solutions. It requires political will beyong party boundaries and traditional ideologies to make changes. And it takes responsibility on the part of all stakeholders from states to trade unions to employers and individuals themselves. And as stakeholders in these times, youth organizations have a big role to play, and a lot to say.
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