How can public employment services adapt their offer to the goals of the reinforced Youth Guarantee Program?

The Council of the European Union decided in October 2020 to extend and reinforce the Youth Guarantee (YG) Program, and adopted a Recommendation on „A Bridge to Jobs – Reinforcing the Youth Guarantee”. The new Recommendation puts forward a number of key modifications in the priorities of the interventions helping young people to enter the labour market. 

Public Employment Services (PES) have played a vital role in the YG’s success, by designing, co-ordinating and providing active measures and youth services. Their activities are significantly affected by the changes proposed in the Recommendation, which calls for a rethink of the targeting of the interventions, the way outreach is conducted and the cooperation of PES with organisations participating as partners.

To this end, the Network of European Public Employment Services organised an online Thematic Review Workshop, held on 18-19 March 2021, where PES experts from several EU Member States exchanged experiences and good practices, and discussed about new forms of interventions and youth services.

The contributions of Budapest Institute to the event included developing the background material to be discussed, as well as expert support to the workshop.

You can read the thematic paper written by Márton Csillag, senior researcher at BI, providing an overview of the key questions and issues related to the workshop.

BI has given expert support to the programmes organised by the Network of European Public Employment Services before; for more details see below:

Lifelong learning, re- and upskilling of the workforce to prevent unemployment

Expert support for the new European PES Network

Assessing the performance of Public Employment Services

PES to PES dialogue in Europe

The Austrian ÖSB Consulting company has reached out to Márton Csillag, senior researcher at BI, to prepare the background material of the workshop. ÖSB Consulting collaborates with the Network in organising events, on behalf of the European Commission.