(18 May 2015) – The Jacques Delors Institute working group on youth employment calls upon European leaders to rapidly implement a new mobility program – “Erasmus Pro” – which would allow a million young Europeans to obtain a professional qualification in another EU country by 2020.
The article is based on several key issues:
- 1. Youth unemployment: an unacceptable situation, an insufficient response.
- 2. Trans-European mobility for young people to qualify and to access the job market.
- 3. A new European mobility programme: Erasmus Pro.
- 4. How the programme works: mobilising young people and businesses.
- 5. A budget of approximately €5 billion a year for young European apprentices.
- 6. Guaranteeing circular mobility for young apprentices within the EU and facilitating their return to their native countries.
Thanks to a sub-section of its Erasmus+ pro¬gramme, the EU already offers young European appren-tices the chance to complete part of their training abroad. But, according to th authors, “this initiative will undoubtedly prove useful once all of the countries have a quality apprenticeship system in place, but unfortunately that is not the case today. The countries most badly hit by unemployment are also those that are lagging behind the most in pre¬cisely this sphere, which accounts for the very limited impact that this sub-section of the programme has had to date.”