Horizontal and vertical coordination of the European Youth Guarantee

Abstract

The European Union launched the Youth Guarantee (YG) in 2013 to combat the increase in youth unemployment following the financial and economic crisis. The goal of the YG was to ensure that all young people under the age of 25 would receive a high-quality, concrete offer of employment or training within four months of leaving formal education or becoming unemployed. The measures at national level were to combine various activities: early intervention and activation, supportive measures enabling labour market integration, assessment and continuous improvement of the scheme, and its swift implementation. An additional emphasis was to be placed on building up partnership-based approaches and effective coordination across policy fields such as employment, education, youth and social affairs (Council of the European Union, 2013). To advance these goals, the EU for the first time dedicated a specific budget to youth employment policy, creating the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI), which supplements the financial aid provided under the European Social Fund (ESF). The YEI budget was directed primarily at young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs) who were living in regions where youth unemployment rates were higher than 25 per cent in 2012 (European Commission, 2017c). In addition, the incorporation of the YG into the Country Specific Recommendations of the European Semester indicated that the scheme would be monitored more closely compared with the implementation of other EU social policies. Altogether, decision makers combined high expectations with particular support for the YG at EU level. The goals confirm that the YG was rooted in the normative paradigms of an activating labour market policy (Gilbert and Van Voorhis, 2001; OECD, 1989) and a social investment welfare state (Giddens, 1998; Morel