Youths, education, employment, and opportunities – four buzzwords that ought to stop being such and become part and parcel of the European political agenda.
For the last weeks Brussels was a hub of activity, not that it usually isn’t, but during Commissioner-hearings period it is always a special time in the capital of European affairs.
Malta’s designate Commissioner Karmenu Vella faced quite a tough one, with the environmental bloc, and a good number of other lobbies, surely not satisfied with the evasive performance shown by him. Nonetheless the committee recommended his appointment, and now, together as one with all my other Maltese and European colleagues, we look forward to start working in the interest of our country and Europe.
Maltese media was undoubtedly inundated with Vella’s grilling, but it may have missed out on all the other ones, 26 of them to be precise. As part of my work in the Committee on Culture and Education, dubbed CULT, I was present for the hearing of the Commissioner Designate for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, Marianne Thyssen. I took this opportunity to voice my concerns about job creation and economic growth, and put forward a question to Thyssen on the topic.
My major concerns lie in the fact that we need to start acting concretely in order for education to effectively bring about economic growth. Currently there are too many gaps between the education sector and the labour market, and immediate action is needed to narrow this gap. Only then can we start seeing the true fruits of holistic education that brings about prosperity and growth within our societies.
The EU’s project, the Youth Guarantee, aims at ensuring that young people aged under 25 are either in employment, traineeship or continued education within four months of leaving formal education, so that a 75 per cent employment rate for the working-age population (20-64 years) is reached by 2020.
We need to start acting concretely in order for education to effectively bring about economic growth
In theory this is a very commendable cause, however its practicability is proving to be elusive. Facts have in fact, thus far, proven so. With only two member States actually utilising these allocated funds, I further challenged Thyssen to outline how she plans on making the Youth Guarantee more feasible and accessible.
Acknowledging that the scheme has indeed had a slow start, the Commissioner-designate outlined that structural changes to such programmes are being prepared in order to streamline processes and make them quicker, in a bid to bring about more and more opportunities for the European youth sector.
Education and youths are the future of our society, but they are also its present. Every programme, structure and idea that aims to bolster youth involvement and opportunities is essential to bringing about holistic progress in this sector.
The CULT committee tackles all the above mentioned aspects, especially when it comes to education and youth policy.
However, we need to now start going a step further – transmit what comes out of these committees to all the European citizens we represent, so that ultimately we can create a new cult – a cult of youths, education, employment and opportunities which looks towards a bright and prosperous European future for all.
Therese Comodini Cachia is a Nationalist MEP.