A European young student speaks about the Youth Policies of the European Commission

Micael Carvalho is
Senior Innovation Consultant at j​eKnowledge (JADE)

In the recent years, the European Commission has started to give more attention to the Youth Policy. The goal of this policy is to encouraging the development of youth exchanges and exchanges of youth workers, and off course a better education, training and health for all the children and youths in Europe.

Before 2001, the activities of the European institutions rewarding youth, was the consideration and implementation of specific programs, such as “Youth for Europe”. Still, a consensus remained that these programs needed to be more profound and that young people must be more involved in youth policies. To solve this problem, in 2001 appeared the W​hite Paper on Youth,​adopted by all the member states to increase the integration and cooperation in four youth priority areas: participation, information, voluntary activities and a great understanding and knowledge of youth. On the basis of the White Paper, the Council of the European Union established, in June 2002, a framework for European cooperation in the field of youth, and in November 2005, the framework was updated to take into account the European Youth Pact.

The E​U Youth Policies​are based on various programs. We have the EU Youth Strategy that have two objectives:

­ more and equal opportunities for young people in education and in the labor market; ­ active citizenship, social inclusion and solidarity of young people.

With this program the EU want to create a “…range of concrete initiatives to help young people to face opportunities and challenges in education and training, employment and entrepreneurship, health and well­being, participation, voluntary activities, social inclusion, creativity and culture, and youth and the world.”, Y​outh, Fact Sheets on the European Union ­ 2015.​

Another action program is the Youth Action Programme that consist in inspire a sense of active citizenship, solidarity and tolerance among Europeans from adolescence to adulthood, involving them in shaping the Union’s future.

EU have also other programs to involve Youth people, like”Y​outhonthemove”​, “A​nEU agenda for the rights of the child”​, “Preventing and combating violence against children and young people” and “Y​outh and media”​.

However, the most important concern of the EU on the future of young policy is that “Integrating and keeping young people in education and the labour market is becoming a huge challenge and a huge priority for European societies.”. To combat this problem, the EU set specific objectives, these are: improve the level of key competences and skills; foster quality improvement in youth work; complement policy reforms at local, regional and national level, supporting the development of knowledge; enhance the international dimension of youth activities and the role of youth workers and organisations as support structures for young people.

In the E​urostat p​ublication about the EU unemployment figures, we can verify that the crisis has hit the young population and in some countries we can see that half of economically active under 25s are still out of work with few prospects to finh​ttp://www.garagerasmus.org/the­erasmus­generation.htmld​any employment in the near future. This is the principal issue for young people. The latest “Erasmus Generation Survey” show that the most important priority of EU must be the youth job creation.

In the recent years, we can see that European Commission is most interested in solving the problems that the young people face, for that, they are more European programs to help young people to find first job, more forums to debate these problematic and other initiatives.

One solution for all these problems are us, young european people, we can fight for our rights, and be better prepared for the future. We need to be more proactive in your society, more informed about Europe and looking for knowledge and opportunities.

The generations of 1880s and 1990s have passed through enormous changes, so who is better than us to understand the difficulties that we have experienced during ours lives?

So, we are the ablest people to solve these problems, and for that we need to help the European Institutions to understand what are our problems and searching for the best way to resolve them.