A record of 21% of young Europeans unemployed has been reached. In order to contain this rate, the Assembly of European Regions (AER) tried to mobilise its member regions and its Youth Regional Network (YRN) during a conference on youth professional mobility.

The unemployment rate of Young Europeans has reached a record highpoint of 21% on average. For this reason, the Commission has developed a European programme to facilitate labor mobility of young people with the goal of halving youth unemployment by adapting Erasmus programme to the labour market. According to this programme, one of the recurring answers by its members as a tool to help fight youth unemployment is youth mobility. The latter is not only essential to facilitate integration on the job market but also to enable cultural and linguistic exchanges.

In the conference organized with this aim, participants underlined the need to progress in the areas of linguistic and educational preparation, and to set up appropriate evaluation methods. In this context, the audience praised AER’s Eurodyssey programme for its efficiency and its simple framework, especially because many programmes already exist, however certain limitations, such as a lack of information and knowledge among companies as well as administrative and legal barriers, hinder their optimal use.

Regions can promote all European programmes in this field, and even propose their own initiatives to their young citizens. Therefore, AER’s sub-committee on ‘Education and Training’ presented the “Trans’Europe Centre” project, which offers college students the opportunity to visit another European country for at least five days. This initiative, which has already been used by two-thirds of the region’s high schools, allows teenagers to experience the European dimension on a new level and constitutes a unique opportunity for their future. The region’s budget for this project amounts to €2 million per year.

Hande Özsan Bozatli, President of the AER’s Committee on ‘Culture, Education, Youth and International Cooperation’ underlined the fact that the increased exchanges between youth and the regional stakeholders is a prerequisite of the territories’ future, but also for Europe as a whole.

AER has also invested in another project in favour of youth employment: project YES, Youth Entrepreneurship Strategies, aims at promoting entrepreneurship within the educational system. Entrepreneurship is not traditionally considered as an obvious career option - 60% of European citizens state that they have never considered setting up their own business, according to a Eurobarometer survey from 2007-. AER has therefore decided to cooperate with seven other partners in order to improve regional policies in the field of entrepreneurial education.