In 2018, more than 3 million young people were unemployed in the European Union.
That’s more than 15% of young Europeans.
Although labour policies remain a national competence, the EU has put in place several
initiatives to fight youth unemployment, including through the use of Cohesion Funds.
We have travelled across Europe to discover a few of those projects.
Let’s start with Bridge, a Rotterdam-based programme that tackles one of the root causes
of youth unemployment: education.
South Rotterdam is one of the most deprived areas of the Netherlands, it's a huge area,
about 200,000 inhabitants, and we have a lot of unemployment,
school dropouts, bad housing situations.
Bridge is actually the program that is the link between education and work.
What we see is that there are a lot of job opportunities, especially in technical branches,
health care branches, the construction sector, the food industry, but on the other hand we see
that young people choose education in sectors with less perspectives on jobs in the future.
We are trying to align the choices of young people and the needs of the labour market.
We have two instruments we work with, the first one is the career orientation program on schools.
We start from age 8 in primary school,
and the second instrument we have are the career starting guarantees.
About 10 organisations/employers offer about 600 career starting guarantees yearly.
For the national urgency programme as well as for the Bridge project, we use the law
of the farm: it takes time for the crops to grow, so what we are doing now is planting
the seeds, and after that we have a very nice neighbourhood with a lot of job opportunities
for the children, but also for children who choose for the right sectors.
Shall we move now to Belgium?
In Molenbeek, a municipality in Brussels, Art2Work uses art as a way to help young people
integrate into the labour market.
Art2Work is an organisation that specifically targets people from 18-30 years of age, mainly
the inhabitants of the so-called popular neighborhoods around the canal, in the center of Brussels.
Neighborhoods that are unfortunately often seen negatively in the media.
Often these young people have faced a lot of problems, leading to dropping out.
They are therefore far removed from the labor market and conventional methods no longer
work, that's why we think we have to find new methods.
I am an artist, a composer.
When I was told about the project, which is related to events, I wanted to discover what
opportunities it held, in which I did not really have any experience.
This is different because Art2Work offers not only work, but also a form of training.
These are things that you do not necessarily learn in other trades.
In other trades, you are hired, you work, you are paid, and that’s it.
Here there is really a follow-up, which also applies to the personal projects of every
individual within Art2Work.
We also have, for example, artists who come to coach in workshops for a day, who have
very atypical profiles, with inspiring or sometimes very complex backgrounds.
We create the workshops, we have a program,
but it’s always focused on the group and the individuals.
We always adapt as much as possible according to their needs.
In the last year, more than 70% of those who started have taken positive steps.
But if you cannot find a job, you might be better off creating one for yourself.
Let’s go now to Paris, where Bond’Innov helps entrepreneurs
to build their company in a depressed area.
Bond'innov is an incubator of start-ups.
Its mission is to select projects that are innovative.
Of course, what we study when we receive applications for projects
is their ability to move from concept to economic reality.
The accompaniment we provide is an accompaniment in which the human dimension is extremely important.
We are here in Seine-Saint-Denis, in the east of Paris, in a diverse area.
Almost all the entrepreneurs here are applying for this incubator because we can help them
develop towards southern countries.
And often the entrepreneur is a French person, who wants to work with their country of origin,
home, or with which he has an interest, even only economic.
I’m trying to be full-time on my project, Bmeet, a professional platform that facilitates
access to qualified professionals in Africa.
The aim is to facilitate interactions between European and African companies
that want to launch in Africa.
When I arrived at Bond'innov, I had a vision of this project that was fundamentally challenged.
It allowed us to mature it, to be able to develop more solid foundations and to be credible
with our customers, our potential investors, and also to facilitate the profitability of
the company we want to set up.
Without Europe, we would never have succeeded in launching this organization.
We would never have managed to build a team like we did, have the space we have, have
the quality of support that we put in place.
Employment and labour mobility has been one of the priorities
for Cohesion Policy in the current programme.
In the next one, it will become one of the criteria for the allocation of Cohesion Funds,
as youth unemployment remains a challenge and a priority for Europe.