Changes from plenary report to adopted text

42. Stresses the need to bolster RYG governance through a collaborative and community-based approach in all its phases; calls on the Member States to strengthen coordination between ministries, public authorities, PES, social partners, relevant labour market actors, education and training providers, social and healthcare services, national youth councils, civil society, including grassroots and youth organisations, and cultural and sports actors at national, regional and local level to ensure that everyone works within integrated networks of services for NEETs;

43. Calls, in this context, for the establishment of formal partnerships through, inter alia, tripartite commissions, cooperation agreements, or protocols at national or regional level between relevant public authorities and these partners; stresses the necessity of building trust between RYG providers and local communities, for example by aligning educational and training RYG offers with labour market needs, involving social partners and other stakeholders in the design, monitoring and enforcement of quality RYG offers and offering additional preparatory training or bridging programmes to early school leavers; encourages the Member States to disseminate best practices, such as sectoral partnerships and training initiatives in direct partnership with employers aimed at securing recruitment at the end of training, job fairs, information days or other employer-youth matching events;

44. Calls on the Member States to adopt a regional approach to implementing the RYG, with substantial and prioritised investments and measures in regions with the highest NEET, youth unemployment and inactivity rates where structural disadvantages are greater; stresses that this regional approach must benefit from national supervision in order to ensure equal standards for support and delivery throughout every Member State and reduce regional inequalities; stresses, furthermore, that this approach should foster tailored measures for vulnerable NEETs whether they live in urban, rural or remote areas, such as transport and digital connectivity support, specific training for rural NEETs, and targeted improvements in the administrative outreach of PES and in the delivery capacity of PES to offer in-person as well as digital and mobile support, in turn supporting local employment and preventing the outflow of young people; further calls on the Member States to involve local authorities more closely in the design of RYG schemes in order to increase their sense of ownership;

45. Commends the Youth Guarantee Knowledge Centre and calls on the Commission to update this database, focusing on past initiatives that have proven successful in supporting NEETs and integrating them sustainably into the labour market; believes that this Knowledge Centre should serve as a basis for more frequent exchanges of best practice between Member States and regions, particularly with regard to monitoring, reporting, governance and cooperation; encourages peer reviews between Member States as well as the organisation of cross-border projects on the implementation of the RYG to promote the adoption of proven models, including in regions facing implementation challenges; calls on the Commission to ensure greater transparency regarding the YG coordinators’ meetings and to broaden their participation to include other stakeholders such as civil society, where appropriate; considers that this cooperation at European level should be coupled with closer interparliamentary relations;

46. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to include in RYG schemes a set of preventive measures and early warning systems focusing on early school leaving in order to improve the school-to-work transition and avoid long-term impacts on young people’s lives; suggests that these measures should have educational and early intervention dimensions, with a particular focus on low levels of basic, digital and soft skills, and should include mechanisms for schools to identify and report young people at risk of becoming NEETs to the services responsible for the RYG; calls, in particular, for improved mapping of RYG beneficiaries, coaching measures, mentoring programmes involving professionals, cooperation to strengthen family capacity to support children in their learning, learning opportunities in both formal as well as non-formal and informal environments, civic education programmes, and career and vocational guidance and for skills assessments to be developed;

47. Calls on the Member States to invest in the training of education and training providers to enable them to identify learners at risk of early leaving from education and training and to support them effectively; urges the Member States to prioritise upskilling of teachers and VET trainers in strategic sectors, in particular digital and emerging technologies; suggests a requirement for schools to conduct exit interviews with early school leavers on advancing on an individual pathway into employment through further learning or work in order to support informed decision-making;

48. Calls on the Member States to build on potential synergies between the RYG and the Council Recommendation of 28 November 2022 on pathways to school success, by including concrete links between the two schemes in their national strategies towards school success, with specific actions such as offering routes back into mainstream education and training, or ensuring access to quality second-chance programmes for all those who have prematurely left education or training;

49. Calls on the Member States to invest in and strengthen their VET offers and modernise their lifelong learning systems, in close cooperation with social partners, as well as education and training providers, local enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in particular by exploring options for individual training accounts or training funds in line with national models; stresses the need to ensure the inclusiveness and quality of training offered under RYG schemes and their recognised qualifications; urges the Commission and the Member States to harmonise EU-wide qualification frameworks and promote cross-border recognition; calls, in particular, on the Member States to recognise the individual right to training and lifelong learning for all young people; calls on the Commission to build on the Herning Declaration in the forthcoming EU VET strategy to improve the attractiveness, quality, portability and inclusiveness of these opportunities for young people; highlights the importance of concretely demonstrating the career opportunities created by VET, particularly in the context of the green and digital transitions and evolving labour market demands; welcomes, in this context, the announcement of the creation of a European Skills Intelligence Observatory, which will aim to increase skills capacity and foresight, using where appropriate advanced technologies, and to ensure a skilled and resilient workforce;

50. Calls for the promotion of quality apprenticeships and dual education systems, such as by combining classroom learning and practical work experience, especially for vulnerable young people, to make it an appealing pathway; stresses the need to ensure the equal recognition and integration of apprenticeships within education systems in line with the European Framework for Quality and Effective Apprenticeships; calls, furthermore, for upskilling and reskilling opportunities, in particular in local SMEs and social enterprises, in order to ensure the continuity and relevance of training pathways; recognises the efforts made by Member States with regard to upskilling and reskilling programmes and recalls that Directive (EU) 2019/1152 establishes that where an employer is required to provide training to a worker to carry out the work for which they are employed, such training must be provided to the worker free of cost, must count as working time and, where possible, should take place during working hours;

51. Stresses the need to ensure synergies with existing national skilling programmes by creating dedicated opportunities for RYG beneficiaries and to improve the quality and inclusiveness of education; calls, furthermore, for the participation of RYG beneficiaries in Erasmus+ to be prioritised, including through simplified and accessible application procedures and mobility support for participants from Member States with higher rates of young people in vulnerable situations;

52. Underlines the importance of social entrepreneurship as a tool for promoting youth employment, particularly for young people who are in vulnerable situations and for NEETs; stresses that social enterprises can contribute to the development of skills, social integration and the creation of sustainable jobs with a local impact; calls on the Commission and the Member States to strengthen their support for social enterprises in the context of the RYG, including through appropriate funding, training, guidance and access to cooperation networks;

53. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to take coordinated action to close persistent gaps in functional numeracy, literacy and digital skills, which hinder young people’s access to quality education, training and employment; calls for the upskilling of low-skilled NEETs with tailored, flexible and labour-market relevant offers, such as online and in-person courses or a modular learning format on STEM, digital skills and AI, languages, basic skills and entrepreneurial skills, financial literacy, cultural education and creative skills, certified by micro-credentials; stresses that micro-credentials must comply with verifiable quality standards, provide for explicit employer recognition mechanisms and be integrated into national skills identification, validation and certification systems;

56. Underlines the importance of improving the collection and availability of disaggregated and reliable data on children in care and those approaching care-leaving age, in order to strengthen targeted policies, including the RYG; calls on the Member States and PES to extend outreach measures, support services and cooperation to all care settings and to establish a dedicated pathway for care leavers in need as part of the implementation of the RYG, including early identification, coordinated case management between social services and PES services, and the continuity of access to employment support, social protection, housing support and other services required to guarantee equal access and a smooth transition to education, training and future employment opportunities;

57. Believes that greater interoperability between EU programmes and action plans would strengthen the overall action of the Member States, while ensuring the added value of each programme and their targeted efforts in a complementary manner; calls on the Member States to strengthen the links between their RYG schemes and other national youth programmes, setting priorities for RYG beneficiaries; calls on the Member States, in this regard, to develop a national youth cooperation plan and to regularly evaluate and report on their integrated and cross-cutting approaches in support of young people;

58. Calls on the Member States to strengthen national, regional and local outreach measures targeting vulnerable NEETs and to make the activation of this group the top priority of their RYG implementation, acknowledging that they require different engagement strategies; calls, in particular, for dedicated resources to be invested in proactive, decentralised and community-based outreach approaches, which should be combined with integrated service delivery to overcome any specific barriers to social inclusion, and to move away from a traditional model that relies solely on a registration system; stresses that many measures have proven effective in reaching hard-to-reach NEETs and should now be scaled up at national level, including by hiring employment activation specialists from PES and Roma mediators, organising mobile PES units, youth work, mentorship programmes, direct outreach in sports clubs, leisure venues and shopping centres, and ambassador programmes, and optimising the use of digital services and social media;

59. Stresses that stepping up these outreach efforts must make it easier to reach out to vulnerable young people who have so far been invisible to RYG schemes; emphasises that consultation with vulnerable NEETs ensures that their lived experiences contribute directly to more effective awareness-raising, outreach and delivery, particularly for those furthest from the labour market; notes that vulnerable young people do not necessarily identify themselves with the ‘NEET category’, and calls, in this regard, on RYG providers to extend outreach beyond this categorisation in order to raise awareness among as many potential beneficiaries as possible; believes that the involvement of peer-to-peer intermediaries, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local community organisations is essential in order to reach NEETs directly in their communities; notes that for young people in vulnerable situations, the approach must be low threshold, without the need for registration or documentation;

60. Regrets that, despite efforts, no Member State is currently close to achieving the EU-level targets set out in the EU Roma strategic framework for equality, inclusion and participation, in particular the objective to halve by 2030 the gap in NEET rates between Roma young people and the general population; stresses that identifying Roma and Traveller young people, particularly those who are nomadic or from rural and isolated areas, as a priority target group under the RYG, and coordinating these two instruments in synergy, can deliver measurable improvements in education, training and employment outcomes;

61. Calls on the Member States to provide training and awareness programmes on unconscious bias and non-discrimination to public officials, RYG providers, in particular PES workers, employers, and educational and training providers participating in RYG schemes, including on ethnicity, gender, cultural and social sensitivity, physical and intellectual developmental disabilities, sexual orientation and socio-economic background;

62. Calls on the Member States to ensure a structural link between RYG schemes and social protection systems, ensuring equal access to adequate individual income support and other forms of financial assistance for eligible young people in need before, during and after RYG offers in order to prevent gaps in coverage, reduce poverty risks during transitions, and ensure that vulnerable NEETs can meaningfully participate in employment, education and training;

63. Calls on the Member States to explore measures to ensure continuity of coverage and support under the YG for young people engaged in seasonal or temporary work abroad, taking into account the fact that many spend only part of the year working abroad and return home without income for the remainder of the year; stresses the importance of ensuring recognition of skills acquired abroad and rapid re-engagement with employment services upon return; further calls on the Member States to systematically collect and update data on the number of young people undertaking seasonal or temporary work abroad on an annual basis to better inform policy responses and ensure tailored support;

64. Suggests systematically referencing the RYG in national and local schemes in order to improve visibility and strengthen awareness of the available support services among administrations, local authorities, businesses and target groups; stresses that it is essential for beneficiaries to be aware that they are part of an RYG scheme in order to understand the overall support available to them and calls, in this regard, for national or EU-wide RYG awareness campaigns; calls on the Commission to develop, together with the Member States, a set of visibility rules for RYG schemes, including a recognisable visual identity and clear communications indicating that EU funding is being used;

65. Emphasises the need for additional mapping efforts to identify current gaps, adapt outreach strategies, and propose targeted measures and investments for different NEET subgroups; calls, in particular, on the Member States to carry out a comprehensive and regional analysis of the characteristics of NEET populations, as well as the criteria that increase the chances of becoming a NEET, such as gender, age, disability, or level of education, in order to ensure that measures are tailored to the needs of these young people; suggests that this analysis should include consultation with target groups and relevant stakeholders such as civil society and social partners;

66. Calls on the Commission to provide targeted technical assistance to the Member States to improve profiling and screening tools, and for the development of digital tools aimed at identifying the needs of RYG beneficiaries based on best practice in individualised support; recommends that Member States provide automated self-assessment tools that evaluate the factors determining the support available, noting that online channels may be easier for some young people to use for initial contact; highlights, in this regard, the promising use of profiling tools in some Member States, including AI-based tools, but stresses the need for human oversight and gender-sensitive approaches to avoid misclassification, discrimination or bias;

67. Calls on the Commission to carefully consider the situation of young workers in any upcoming initiative on AI at the workplace, paying particular attention to entry-level positions, as well as working and employment conditions; underlines the need to include AI, digital literacy, creativity and media skills in education and training curricula in order to equip young people with basic operational skills to use digital tools and AI systems and the critical faculties to evaluate their risks and ethical implications, especially for the labour market; calls for the development of synergies with other EU programmes and funds in order to support inclusive digital upskilling;

68. Calls on the Commission and the Member States, in line with the 2012 Council Recommendation on the validation of non-formal and informal learning, to strengthen and further develop their systems for the validation of non-formal and informal learning and skills acquired by young people; calls for these systems to be adapted to reach NEETs, in particular those who are vulnerable or hard to reach, by increasing the awareness and accessibility of procedures, improving cross-border recognition, enhancing the capacities of those responsible for validation, diversifying the types of certification that can be obtained through validation to include, for example, informal caregiving, volunteering and youth work, or by offering specific arrangements, while ensuring the quality of these procedures; highlights the good validation practices identified in the European inventory on validation of non-formal and informal learning, in particular the link with the European Qualifications Framework and the involvement of employer organisations in these procedures to ensure the recognition of certified qualifications;

69. Calls on the Member States to balance the offers provided under the RYG schemes to promote sustainable skills development, continuing education, apprenticeships and training opportunities in combination with employment and subsidised jobs; recalls that the choice between the four main categories of offers must be based on the individual aspirations and needs of beneficiaries; calls for the promotion of RYG offers of quality and fairly remunerated traineeships, apprenticeships and vocational pathways, compliant with EU law and requirements, which equip young people with adequate skills, in particular those in demand in the labour market and in sectors where skills shortages persist across many Member States; stresses that quality education offers under RYG schemes should be extended beyond the 15-18 age group;

70. Stresses the value of targeted and monitored employer incentives, such as wage subsidies or tax credits, in boosting the labour market participation of vulnerable NEETs; recommends an ex ante and ex post analysis of financial incentives granted to employers in order to avoid subsidising companies who do not require public assistance, to ensure that short-term placements under RYG schemes do not act as a substitute for permanent contracts and to prevent precarious, non-standard and involuntary part-time offers;

71. Emphasises the corporate social responsibility of companies, which should include targeted measures for NEETs, in particular vulnerable NEETs, and partnerships with education and training providers to introduce young people to a variety of career opportunities; stresses the need to assist SMEs, which require more information and support in order to participate in RYG schemes; welcomes the programmes developed under the RYG schemes in certain Member States aimed at developing youth entrepreneurship and incentives for start-ups; calls on the Commission and the Member States to support young people in becoming self-employed or running micro-businesses by providing enhanced and specialised support in developing a viable business; calls on the Member States to develop support under the RYG for heritage-related economic activities, including traditional crafts, particularly in rural and depopulated areas;

76. Encourages the Commission and the Member States to improve the recognition and validation of skills and competences acquired through youth work, including through the development and clarification of qualifications and professional standards where appropriate; believes that such a process should include consultation with relevant youth work stakeholders and be in line with the European youth work agenda;

77. Stresses that greater efforts are needed to improve the inclusivity of the RYG; calls on the Member States to lead by example by promoting the recruitment of vulnerable NEETs into public administration; encourages the Member States to assign a dedicated and permanent case manager to each beneficiary, who should develop, as far as possible, meaningful one-to-one engagement to effectively provide the necessary and appropriate services for the duration of the scheme; stresses the importance of implementing the Union of Equality strategies in a cross-cutting manner and combating discrimination and stigma in order to create the necessary framework for the inclusion of all NEETs;

78. Notes with concern that young mothers face a significantly higher risk of labour market exclusion, career penalties and NEET status as a result of disproportionate care responsibilities; underlines the importance of affordable, accessible and quality early childhood education and care in facilitating young mothers’ access to education and the labour market; calls on the Commission and the Member States to provide targeted and integrated support for young mothers at risk of poverty, including single mothers, notably through the provision of free or subsidised early childhood education and care and priority access to public childcare services; further calls on the Member States to develop tailored activation pathways for young mothers combining flexible and modular education and training programmes, including part-time and remote learning options, VET, traineeships and apprenticeships, flexible working arrangements and mentoring and career guidance services, to enable sustainable labour market integration;

79. Stresses that mentoring is an effective and cost-efficient intervention mechanism that can help build resilience and confidence, combat social exclusion among RYG beneficiaries and ensure the long-term success of RYG measures; calls on the Member States to provide mentoring support as part of their RYG schemes to connect trained mentors with young beneficiaries on a voluntary basis, including to develop their ability to use emerging technologies; points out that this mentoring should be available before, during and after the placement, in order to ensure sustainable inclusion; stresses that such mentorship programmes should complement, but not replace, professional PES counselling;

80. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to analyse and increase the meaningful participation of young people and youth organisations in the design of intervention models aimed at them and in the implementation of the RYG, in particular in the design and execution of intervention, outreach, support and evaluation, as well as in future policy revisions, notably through ‘Youth Checks’, so that their needs can be taken into account; underlines that youth inclusion policies can help to enable young people to contribute to their communities;

81. Calls on the Commission to launch an open method of coordination on the quality of RYG offers, aimed at developing specific common indicators for monitoring and evaluation and strengthening or creating national and regional frameworks of quality standards in line with EU frameworks such as the Quality Framework for Traineeships and the European Framework for Quality and Effective Apprenticeships; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure the regular exchange of best practice, in consultation with social partners, on effective measures to improve the quality of RYG offers; calls on the Commission to include specific measures for youth employment in the Quality Jobs Act, in particular to ensure high-quality and stable jobs; calls for the conclusion of negotiations on the proposed Traineeships Directive in order to provide a clear and robust quality framework for traineeships offered under RYG schemes, which should be fairly remunerated and accessible to all young people, combine structured learning with practical experience and serve as effective entry points into the labour market;

82. Calls on the Member States to improve the quality of RYG offers by promoting decent conditions, including fair remuneration, by better matching NEET profiles with the offers received and by improving the monitoring of placements with quality indicators focused on long-term career prospects; calls on the Member States to explore the possibility of certification or quality labels for employers or organisations that exceed EU or national quality frameworks; stresses the need to set up and provide information on anonymous, safe and effective reporting channels for RYG providers and beneficiaries to report alleged infringements of rights and obligations as well as to strengthen the controls carried out by labour inspectorates to ensure the full enforcement of EU law;

83. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that traineeships offered under the RYG are fairly remunerated, in line with applicable EU law and national frameworks, and based on clearly defined learning and training objectives and a written traineeship agreement; emphasises that unpaid traineeships must not form part of structured active labour market policies; calls for the forthcoming Traineeships Directive to be ambitious and comprehensive, ensuring the full protection of trainees’ rights, including the right to terminate a traineeship without prejudice in the event of a breach of fundamental rights, and calls for the swift conclusion of negotiations;

84. Acknowledges one-stop shops as a successful model in several Member States for providing adequate support to youth beneficiaries of the RYG and to preventively help young people before they become NEETs; underlines that their effectiveness depends on strong interinstitutional coordination, the availability of personalised, case-based support and the ability to overcome the fragmentation of services and reduce administrative burdens and on ensuring that services are accessible and visible to young people; calls on the Member States to develop these low-threshold, multi-agency centres across their countries in order to improve the accessibility of information for NEETs and centralise and increase the uptake of RYG support alongside lifelong guidance and advice on education, housing, health, employment, training, social services and youth work in a single location; encourages the Member States that do not yet have this integrated-approach culture to promote the principle of referral within their public administration, so that requests are referred to another competent service if the one contacted is unable to process them;

85. Calls on the Commission to introduce a quality framework for the RYG with robust monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, in line with the Council Recommendation on A Bridge to Jobs – Reinforcing the Youth Guarantee; stresses that quality criteria must ensure that all offers are aligned with the relevant principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights, provide genuine learning and training opportunities that improve employability and facilitate the transition to the labour market, and include transparent recruitment, recognition and certification of acquired skills, and accessible complaints mechanisms; calls for all employment offers to ensure decent working conditions, fair remuneration, access to social protection, training, career guidance, and reasonable probation periods;

87. Calls on the Member States to allocate dedicated resources to improving the administrative capacity of RYG providers, especially PES, through the provision of training and a toolkit on the absorption of funds; takes the view that this improvement of capacity should also benefit the social partners, youth workers and NGOs involved in RYG implementation; calls on the Commission to allow small-scale funding within the call for projects of existing programmes for stakeholders working with NEETs at local level, in order to expand the use and reach of EU funds across all territories;

88. Urges the Member States to significantly strengthen their systems for monitoring the implementation of the RYG in terms of data quality and coverage, particularly with regard to follow-up indicators and currently unknown results; calls for the collection of timely disaggregated and qualitative data, capturing not only employment status but also the quality of the offer, inclusivity, contract type, remuneration, access to social protection, educational progression, family status, including young and single parents, the risk of falling back into NEET status, and socio-economic background, as well as the impact of interventions on gender, disability and disadvantaged areas; calls on the Commission to provide technical assistance to Member States with incomplete national or local RYG monitoring frameworks in view of their strengthening and to provide training to the dedicated staff as to ensure comparability of data at EU level;

89. Stresses the need to improve the monitoring and evaluation of education, training and apprenticeship outcomes, including by introducing separate monitoring criteria and indicators to follow their long-term success rates, and to follow up on results;

90. Underlines the importance of continuing to integrate the YG and youth employment strategies into the enlargement process; calls on the Commission to continue funding efforts under the next MFF, while monitoring the rigorous use of these funds and placing emphasis on capacity building;

91. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to adopt measures to overcome the structural, legal and administrative barriers to sharing data between services and administrations, while respecting the privacy of the NEETs concerned; encourages in this regard the clear identification of national authority or authorities responsible for data collection under RYG schemes, and calls for databases to be made interoperable by using a unique identifier for each individual across administrations within national systems, including education and training providers and PES; calls on the Commission, furthermore, to issue a communication on the application of the General Data Protection Regulation in order to prevent any misinterpretation and legal uncertainty;

92. Believes that the implementation of the RYG needs a new impetus and renewed dialogue with the Member States; stresses, in this context, the opportunity provided by the new European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan to promote the implementation of the RYG and adopt a more ambitious target for reducing the NEET rate; welcomes the initiative to establish a Skills Guarantee and calls for it to include a dimension for young NEETs;

93. Calls on the Commission to make use of the European Semester to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the RYG, using country-specific recommendations where appropriate, and to use the social convergence framework to steer its EU-wide implementation, including its governance and administrative capacity across Member States; calls on the Commission to reinstate the youth unemployment rate as a headline indicator in the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure Scoreboard in view of its potential risks to macroeconomic stability;

94. Notes that the results of the implementation of the RYG are uneven and that the challenges identified remain relevant today, with some Member States in particularly critical situations; calls on the Commission to adopt decisions to assist Member States whose youth unemployment and NEET rates are higher than the EU average, in order to ensure that the RYG effectively addresses long-standing labour market challenges and reaches eligible beneficiaries while respecting national competencies and labour market specificities; calls on the European Court of Auditors to prepare a special report on the implementation of the RYG;

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95. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.