Once again this week the European parliament expressed its strong desire to see member states implement urgent measures to tackle staggering levels of youth unemployment in the form of a European Youth Guarantee.
With the number of young people in Europe not in work, education or training stubbornly remaining above 5.5 million, MEPs voted by an overwhelming majority to call for employment ministers to agree to introduce a youth guarantee across all member states at their summit in February. The Youth Guarantee would ensure all 18-25-year-olds or recent graduates under 30 who have been out of work or further education for longer than four months to receive a quality offer of a job, internship, placement, training scheme or further education.
Unfortunately for the one million young unemployed people in Britain, the Tories seem intent on reliving the 1980s. Only British Conservative, UKIP and BNP MEPs and their allies voted against the measure in the European parliament (those who bothered to turn up to vote anyway), with even the vast majority of David Cameron’s former colleagues in the centre-right European People’s Party recognising the need for urgent action to address the scourge of unemployment.
The Irish presidency is determined to see some action on this and will be pushing for agreement among member states at the February summit, but where is the political pressure coming from to force Cameron and other rightwing leaders to sign up?
Here in the UK we need a national campaign led by councillors, MPs and MEPs on the left to compel the Tories into agreeing to take action at the EU summit. This should include the Liberal Democrats, who voted in favour of the resolution in the European parliament. They must use their influence in government (such as it is) to push Cameron to action. We need the media to focus less on the date of a speech and more on the substance of policy. Why is it not a national outrage than a million young people are being consigned to a life on the dole by this government?
There is not simply a moral case for action, but an economic one. It costs 150 billion euros for those young people to be out of work. With just 20 billion euros of investment – paid for by unused European Social Funds, not adding to national debt – two million young people could be in work by 2015. There is no time for delay, we must take action now or see another lost generation.
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Kevin Peel is a councillor on Manchester city council and tweets @kevpeel
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It suits the tories to have mass unemployment as it keeps wages down, it’s the spectre of “there’s plenty of people out there who’d have your job”. The minimum wage created a legal level of payment that stopped rogue employers using the excuse of being undercut by competitors,that’s why the tories were so against it. Rememberin the 80’s the tories wasted tens of billions of North Sea oil revenue to keep the 3 million on the dole and then transferred millions on to disability to masque the true figure. The main reason the tories want out of the EU is the Social Chapter. They hate the fact that you can’t be forced to work over 48 hrs, have 4 wks holiday ( the Warwick Agreement also made sure that rogue employers couldn’t include statutory bank holidays in that figure), maternity leave etc. The tories also hate the Health & Safety legislation that saves lives in the workplace.