On the occasion of the European Youth Event 2021 (#EYE2021- European Youth Event in Strasbourg), the CESI Youth panel on ‘EU Resilience and Recovery (RRF) Policies: Bringing youth employment back on track’ started from the presumption that ‘youth voices should be everywhere decisions are being made’ (Jana Degrott during the #EYE2021) and that EU post pandemic recovery should address better youth policies.

The first session of the panel focused on the current challenges young people face and from the reports of the European Youth Forum, Eurofound and FEANTSA/ Abbe Pierre Foundation it is clear that the pandemic had a huge impact on young people in terms of increased unemployment rates, exclusion form online education, struggles to make ends meet, social exclusion, housing and mental health issues. 2 out of the 3 young people interviewed reported mental health issues[1] and many young people were excluded from housing solutions. Only 1% of the national COVID-19 economic policy responses were so far addressing youth. Many experts fear a long-lasting effects of this crisis if recovery policies for young people are not introduced. Despite these alarming trends, the European Commission representative, Max Uebe, mentioned that this trend is going to be reversed since member states are obliged to allocate more support to youth policies if they wish to benefit from the European Structural Funds or the Reinforced Youth Guarantee (if their NEETS rate is above 12,5%). As such, the RRF funds should cover support for young people and children. The European Alliance for Apprenticeships was reinforced and the EU Skills Agenda was recently revised for quality employment and skills so that young people could benefit from the recovery funds kicking in.

As such, the second panel of the CESI Youth at #EYE2021 focused on finding answers to these challenges young people face. There was a general consensus that young people should improve their civic and political  advocacy and that they should claim better access to political decision making, quality jobs and to fight for mental health support.  Brando Benifei, member of the European Parliament, mentioned that ‘we need to fight the culture of exploitation of young people; we see it too often that for many people it is acceptable to not pay young people properly’ for this reason unpaid internships and precarious work contracts should be prevented. Matthäus Fandrejewski, CESI Youth Representative, advocated in favour of securing better, more inclusive policies for youth as part of the national recovery plans and for giving young people more access to social and political platforms to make their voice heard: ‘Bringing Youth Back on Track is the only way EU’s future can be guaranteed! EU must take care of its next generation.’

The video recollection of the event, as portrayed by a visual story teller, could be visualised here and the whole event is available below:

[1] European Youth Forum, ‘The Lockdown Report’ accessed at https://www.youthforum.org/beyond-lockdown-pandemic-scar-young-people 11.10.2021