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In November 2017, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission proclaimed the European Pillar of Social Rights, setting out 20 principles and rights to support well‐functioning and fair labour markets and welfare systems. The European Pillar of Social Rights sets out the right to fair working conditions, states that equality of treatment and opportunities between women and men must be ensured in all areas and sets out the right to access to social protection and training. It also states that probation periods should be of reasonable duration and that the abuse of atypical contracts is to be prohibited. Principle 4 (‘Active support to employment’) states that ‘young people have the right to continued education, apprenticeship, traineeship or a job offer of good standing within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education’.

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The guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States, adopted by the Council in its Decision (EU) 2019/1181 (1), and in particular guideline 6, call upon the Member States to continue to address youth unemployment and the issue of young people not in employment, education or training (‘NEETs’) through prevention of early school leaving and structural improvement in the school-to-work transition, including through the full implementation of the Youth Guarantee.

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The Council Recommendation of 20 December 2012 on the validation of non-formal and informal learning (2) sets out elements and principles for the validation of non-formal and informal learning which enable individuals to have knowledge, skills and competences which have been acquired through non-formal and informal learning validated and to obtain a full qualification, or, where applicable, part qualification.

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The Council Recommendation of 19 December 2016 on Upskilling Pathways: New Opportunities for Adults (3) recommends that adults with a low level of skills, knowledge and competences be offered the opportunity, according to their individual needs, to acquire a minimum level of literacy, numeracy and digital competence, or to acquire a wider set of skills, knowledge and competences.

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The Council Recommendation of 22 May 2018 on key competences for lifelong learning (4) calls upon the Member States to support the development of basic digital skills and to increase and improve the level of digital competences across all segments of the population.

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The Council Recommendation of 10 March 2014 on a Quality Framework for Traineeships (5) offers guidance on the provision of quality traineeships and includes quality elements that relate in particular to learning content, working conditions, and transparency regarding financial conditions and hiring practices.

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The Council Recommendation of 15 March 2018 on a European Framework for Quality and Effective Apprenticeships (6) identifies 14 key criteria that Member States and stakeholders should use to develop quality and effective apprenticeships to ensure both the development of job-related skills and the personal development of apprentices.

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Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council (7) provides a common framework for seven previously independent data collections, including the EU Labour Force Survey. That common framework, namely the Integrated European Social Statistics (IESS), yields more granular cross-EU comparative data, which will enable a better understanding of young people’s transition from education to work, capturing more accurately their learning and working experience, but also their individual background characteristics.

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In its conclusions of 15 December 2016, the European Council calls for the continuation of the Youth Guarantee. In its conclusions of 15 June 2017, the Council reaffirms that tackling youth unemployment and inactivity remains a policy priority, considers that the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative have provided a strong impetus for structural reforms and policy innovation and underlines that reaching out to NEETs requires strong and persistent efforts by national authorities as well as cross-sectoral cooperation.

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In its resolution of 18 January 2018 on the implementation of the Youth Employment Initiative in the Member States, the European Parliament calls on the Member States to establish appropriate and tailored outreach strategies to reach all NEETs and to take an integrated approach towards making more individualised assistance and services available to support young people facing multiple barriers. The European Parliament emphasises the need to improve the quality of offers under the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative and calls for a future discussion about the eligible age bracket.

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The European Green Deal is the Union’s new growth strategy. It aims to transform the Union into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource‐efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use.

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To help repair the economic and social damage caused by the COVID‐19 pandemic, kick‐start the European recovery from that damage, and protect and create jobs, the Commission has proposed a major recovery plan for Europe based on harnessing the full potential of the Union budget and has proposed the recovery instrument ‘Next Generation EU’. That instrument will be crucial to support, among other areas, short‐term measures to support employment, including youth employment, as well as investments in longer‐term policy reforms related to the labour market and social, education and training systems.

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In 2013, during the previous economic recession, the youth unemployment rate (15‐24 year olds) was 24,4 % in the Union (up from 16 % in 2008) and over 50 % in some Member States, and there were 6,5 million NEETs aged 15‐24. In response, the Council Recommendation on establishing a Youth Guarantee was adopted in April 2013 (8). It constitutes a major coordinated response, at Union level, to the challenges faced by youth and is based on educational and active labour market policy interventions in the Member States.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has spiralled the Union into an unprecedented economic recession, which is likely to bring back dramatically high youth unemployment and NEET rates. The Union’s economy is expected to shrink significantly in 2020, entering the deepest recession in its history. Young people who were already in a precarious situation in the labour market or who faced barriers to accessing work prior to the onset of the pandemic will suffer most, while those entering the workforce at this time will find it harder to secure their first job. It is therefore necessary to reinforce the Youth Guarantee in the light of the present crisis.

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Young people may face multiple challenges in the labour market, also because of the transitionary life periods they are going through, their limited or lack of professional experience and other barriers to entering the world of work. As past recessions show, young people are hit harder than older, more experienced workers.

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Young women are more likely than young men to become inactive due to caring responsibilities, such as looking after children or dependent adults, or other personal or family responsibilities. Caring responsibilities as a reason for inactivity is more than five times more prevalent among young women than among young men. That can lead to an increase in the gender employment gap with lasting consequences throughout women’s lives.

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Youth unemployment and inactivity as well as limited access to inclusive high‐quality education and training and social services can have a scarring effect, such as an increased risk of future unemployment, reduced levels of future earnings, loss of human capital and intergenerational transmission of poverty. Those elements translate into individual hardship and generate direct and indirect costs for society at large. They also add to regional inequalities, for example with young people unable to secure sustainable labour market integration in rural or remote areas and therefore seeking opportunities elsewhere.

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Ongoing developments such as automation and digitalisation of production and services continue to reshape the world of work. Young people are overrepresented in non‐standard jobs such as platform or ‘gig’ work, in which they may lack access to adequate social protection. Young people are among those groups exposed to losing their jobs due to automation, as entry-level jobs tend to have a greater proportion of automatable tasks. At the same time, digital technologies create new jobs and increase the demand for skills needed for digital transformation in many sectors of the economy.

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Investing now in the human capital of young Europeans will help to future-proof Europe’s social market economies, catering for demographic shifts while fully embracing the digital age and the growth of jobs in the green economy. Such investments go hand in hand with labour market reforms, which may address some of the structural problems for young people and provide them with a better starting position. The Union will be able to reap the full benefits of an active, innovative and skilled workforce while avoiding the very high economic and social costs of having young people neither in employment, education or training.

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A reinforced Youth Guarantee can contribute to creating youth employment opportunities, promoting youth entrepreneurship and help to harness the opportunities arising from the digital and green transitions. It can help to reduce persistent labour market scars from the severe slowdown by encouraging firms to hire unemployed youth, including those who were unemployed prior to the pandemic, and by providing training that facilitates the matching of unemployed and inactive youth to vacancies.

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A reinforced Youth Guarantee should ensure that all young people receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. To achieve that ambition, it should provide young people with a path towards a stable labour market integration, and reach out and motivate greater numbers of young people regardless of the barriers they may face, making sure that none of them are left behind. A reinforced Youth Guarantee should strive to support young people in gaining valuable work experience and developing the right skills for a changing world of work, in particular those skills relevant to growth sectors and the green and digital transitions. The quality of apprenticeships plays an important role in this respect. There is a need to boost the supply of apprenticeships especially during the recovery phase and to promote the participation of companies in order to facilitate a smoother transition into employment. Apprenticeships prepare young people for jobs that are in high demand and thereby offer them a path towards sustainable labour market integration, including at a local level.

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In the 2013 Council Recommendation on establishing a Youth Guarantee, Member States committed to ensuring that all young people under the age of 25 receive a good quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. Widening the age bracket to include young people aged 25‐29 acknowledges that school-to-work transitions and sustainable labour market integration are taking longer because of the changing nature of work, extended periods spent in education and the skills in demand. It is important to recognise that the economic downturn resulting from the COVID‐19 pandemic will lead to a larger proportion of 25‐29 year olds falling into unemployment and requiring support. It also aligns with Member States’ youth-related measures and programmes, which are generally available to young people between the ages of 15 and 29.

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NEETs are a heterogeneous group. For some young people, being a NEET can be a symptom of multiple and engrained disadvantages and may indicate a longer‐term disengagement from society and therefore require longer interventions. Some young people are especially vulnerable, for example early leavers from education and training or those with inadequate education or training, who often have limited social protection coverage, restricted access to financial resources, precarious work conditions or may face discrimination. For others, such as highly‐skilled young people or those who already have significant and still-relevant work experience, being a NEET is likely to be a temporary status since they face low barriers to labour market entry and have no inherent vulnerabilities. A reinforced Youth Guarantee should recognise that NEETs require an individualised approach: for some NEETs a lighter approach may be sufficient, whereas other, more vulnerable, NEETs may need more intensive, lengthy and comprehensive interventions. Interventions should be based on a gender-sensitive approach, taking into account differences between national, regional and local circumstances.

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More than one in five young people across the Union fail to reach a basic level of digital skills, with low‐qualified young people more than three times more likely to underachieve in digital skills than their high-qualified counterparts. With the COVID‐19 pandemic accelerating the digital transition, the digital skills gap becomes a key determinant in the employability of young people and their ability to seize the opportunities stemming from this transition. Targeted upskilling helps young people respond to the growing demand for digital skills and addresses the digital divide.

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Preparatory training before taking up an offer, carried out according to individual needs and related to specific skill domains such as digital, green, language, entrepreneurial and career management skills, should be part of a reinforced Youth Guarantee, when deemed appropriate. This hands-on training can be a stepping stone towards a full vocational training course, a taster of the world of work, or supplement existing education or work experience before the start of the Youth Guarantee offer. The short-term, informal nature of such preparatory training, which should not prolong the duration of the four-month preparatory phase, distinguishes it from the offer itself.

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Effective coordination and partnerships across policy fields, including employment, education, youth, gender equality and social affairs, are crucial in terms of boosting quality employment as well as education and training opportunities, apprenticeships and traineeships. Integrated services (such as one-stop shops or other models) offer easier access to services and benefits, and can more easily provide tailor-made, flexible and more responsive solutions for young people with multidimensional barriers to the labour market. Integrated services require a change in working culture, putting young people at the centre of the interventions and fostering the exchange of best practice ideas across all levels of government and building networks between all relevant actors. In addition, data protection issues need to be addressed to allow for an effective and smooth cooperation between different public administrations and services.

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The reinforced Youth Guarantee should be implemented by a scheme consisting of supportive measures, and should be geared to national, regional and local circumstances. Such schemes should take into account the diversity of the Member States as regards the levels of youth unemployment and inactivity, the institutional set-up and the capacity of the various labour market players. They should also take into account different situations as regards public budgets and financial constraints in terms of allocation of resources, and be continuously monitored and improved.

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Supportive measures can be financed by Union funds. The Youth Employment Initiative 2014‐2020 (‘YEI’) (to which the Union contributes almost EUR 9 billion), together with additional European Social Fund (‘ESF’) investment, has been a key Union financial resource to support the implementation of the Youth Guarantee. As part of the Recovery Plan for Europe and the instrument ‘Next Generation EU’, the Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Recovery Assistance for Cohesion and the Territories of Europe (‘REACT‐EU’) will provide additional Union funding for youth employment measures. Those efforts will be complemented in the 2021‐27 financing period by the European Social Fund Plus (‘ESF+’) which will support the full range of employment, education and training measures of the reinforced Youth Guarantee,

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The starting point for delivering the Youth Guarantee offer to a young person should be the registration of that young person with a Youth Guarantee provider. Youth Guarantee schemes should be based on the following guidelines, which are structured around four phases (respectively, mapping, outreach, preparation and offer), and should be organised in accordance with national, regional and local circumstances, paying attention to the gender and diversity of the young people who are being targeted:

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