(03 June 2014) – The European Commission has adopted today the first Operational Programme with France to use the available funding from the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) to tackle youth unemployment.
France will receive €620 million from the YEI and the European Social Fund (ESF) to help young people not in employment, education or training (the so-called NEETs) to find a job, in those regions with youth unemployment rates over 25%. It is the first programme adopted in the EU for this €6 billion initiative covering 20 Member States.
13 French regions, namely Aquitaine, Auvergne, Centre, Champagne-Ardenne, Guadeloupe, Guyane, Haute-Normandie, Languedoc-Roussillon, Martinique, Nord-Pas de Calais, Réunion, Mayotte, Picardie, are eligible for YEI funding, which includes match-funding from the European Social Fund (ESF). France has also chosen to allocate 10% of its YEI resources to sub-regions of its Ile de France, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Midi-Pyrénées regions.
The YEI resources are programmed in the national, YEI-dedicated OP adopted today (covering 65% of the total), as well as in the forthcoming regional ESF Operational programmes.