The timing is perfect. In the past week, both the European Parliament and the EU Council approved the budget for key EU programmes aimed at supporting youths through increased mobility in education, employment and research.

For the period 2014-2020, EU success stories such as Erasmus will be extended to Erasmus+, enabling more than four million people to receive support to study, train, work or volunteer abroad. There are about 10,000 from Malta.

We will soon start becoming accustomed to Erasmus+, now broadened to support partnerships aimed at helping people make the transition from education to work, as well as reforms to modernise and improve of the quality of education in member states.

There will also be Horizon 2020, the main programme for research and development.

There is no better way to start getting the hang of it than by dropping in to the Youth On The Move fair being held in St George’s Square, Valletta, this weekend.

There, you will find all the information in one place.

Youth On The Move is an initiative that has already provided young people with information on education and employment opportunities in several cities around Europe.

Mobility concerns young people. It equally concerns businesses. As much as Maltese businesses can venture out to tap the massive EU market, so do European businesses seek to set up shop here.

Therefore, exposure of young people to adequate information on what opportunities are available in a Europe-wide context is not relevant solely for those with their bags already mentally packed to leave. It is also important for those who want to become more employable here.

Here in Malta, we might feel that youth unemployment is a phenomenon that somewhat does not concern us.

In the EU, the youth unemployment rate is more than double the overall unemployment rate.

At present, more than one in five young Europeans on the labour market cannot find a job.

These are startling and alarming figures. We come across a lot of figures but it becomes more difficult to accept when you consider the human being making up the statistic.

When you think of the young people that number represents, you are thinking about every single youth who has finished education with high career expectations but who is suffering the consequences of not being able to find a job.

Despite record unemployment, some occupations still face recruitment difficulties in certain states

EU leaders have already agreed on the principle of a youth guarantee in every country.

It should now be put into practice and the EU is helping through the European Social Fund (over €10 billion per year in the 2014-2020 period), a major source of EU funds that can help member states to finance the youth guarantee.

The European Commission is proposing a quality framework for traineeships, which would enable young people to acquire high-quality work experience under safe conditions and to guard against traineeships being exploited by companies for cheap labour.

High-quality traineeships are also beneficial for companies as they contribute to effectively increase the employability of youngsters and will result in better skills, corresponding to those needed.

We must ensure a better skills match between labour supply and labour demand.

All across Europe, employers are looking for skills they cannot find while skilled workers are out of work.

In the European Vacancy Monitor, the European Commission regularly publishes data about which skills are in short supply and where.

Despite record unemployment in Europe, a number of occupations still experience recruitment difficulties in certain member states.

A better skills match can be achieved through better forecasting of skills needs, allowing the relevant authorities and stakeholders to adapt education and training curricula and enabling young people to make more informed education and career choices.

For those willing to travel away from their countries, the Eures job search portal gives access to more than 1.4 million job vacancies and nearly 31,000 registered employers. However, the network is not yet operating to its full potential.

This is why the Commission has begun a major reform to make the whole Eures system more responsive to labour market realities and to strengthen the focus on mobility for young people by offering jobs and opportunities to combine work with learning in the European labour market.

Not knowing where to start from is a common feeling. We need to make sure the right information gets to the right recipients.

There are various information outlets in Malta that could help youths get acquainted with all these initiatives. This weekend, they’re all going to be in Valletta.

Martin Bugelli is head of the European Commission Representation in Malta.