Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

Added76. 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;

Added77. 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;

Added78. 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;

Added79. 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;

Added80. 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;

Added81. 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;

Added82. 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;

Added83. 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;

Added84. 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;

Added85. 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;

Added86. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to allocate adequate funding for the RYG in the next MFF, in particular by at least maintaining the existing 12.5 % earmarking of EU funds within a future stand-alone and separate ESF to broaden employment, education and training opportunities for young people under the age of 30 across the EU and to improve their socio-economic status; stresses that this EU funding should be seen as an investment in people and should be transparent, primarily support the development of innovative and effective measures, and scale up, without replacing, pre-existing national funds; calls for the introduction of budget tracking on expenditure related to the RYG at EU level, accompanied by a national RYG marker, which should provide a clear breakdown of expenditure related to the RYG; calls on the Member States, and in particular those that have not reached the 2030 NEET rate reduction target, to supplement EU funds for the RYG with national funds in accordance with their aggregate indicators;

Added87. 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;

Added88. 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;

Added89. 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;

Added90. 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;

Added91. 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;

Added92. 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;

Added93. 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;

Added94. 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.