Bonn’s jobs plan focuses on young

Date: 08/04/1999

By Tim Jones

GERMANY has called on the European Investment Bank to concentrate its €10-billion jobs programme on finding employment for thousands of the EU's young people who are out of work.

The proposal, outlined in a new paper on tackling youth unemployment, would be the second revamp of the EIB's special 'human capital' lending scheme since it was launched at the Union's Amsterdam summit in June 1997.

" The European Commission and member states should examine whether the goals of this memo-randum can be supported through enhanced investment in human capital," states the paper.

Under the programme launched in Amsterdam, the EIB has made €500-million worth of high-risk loans to small, innovative firms via local venture capitalists, and invested more than €3 billion in infrastructure for universities, schools, and hospitals.

The German paper Youth and Europe - Our Future is the centrepiece of Bonn's proposed pact to generate jobs in Europe, which is due to be approved by EU leaders at their Cologne summit in June.

Labour Minister Walter Riester has scaled back a radical Franco-German proposal, made just before Union leaders met in Vienna in December, to coordinate EU governments' employment policies and set numerical targets for job creation.

Instead, he has acknowledged that tools for pooling policy established at the November 1997 'jobs summit' in Luxembourg are largely sufficient to fill in the gaps left by straightforward demand management by finance ministries and central banks.

However, Bonn believes that the one missing element is a strategy to find jobs for youngsters who are of working age but under 25, one fifth of whom are out of work in the Union.

The paper warns that although every member state runs programmes to develop business skills and encourage vocational training, an increasing number of young people are remaining unemployed for more than a year.

" Youth unemployment is, on average, twice as high as general unemployment," it points out. "Member states and their national action programmes have rightly made clear that the limitation of youth unemployment is very high on their political agenda."

The paper also calls for a strengthening of existing EU-level initiatives in the education and training field. In particular, it argues, the pilot projects for a 'Europass', which provides an apprenticeship passport for young people crossing borders within the Union, should be extended and made permanent.

In addition, it recommends that the next generation of EU programmes to finance cross-border initiatives - Leonardo II and Socrates II - should "concentrate on innovative subjects".

" Within the general school curriculum, the expansion of competence in the language of one or more member states should be given higher priority," states the paper.