The European Commission adopted the 'Youth Opportunities Initiative' in which it asks to the Member States to work for tackling the youth unemployment by helping youngsters develop skills relevant to the labour market or helping young people find a first good job. The Commission has therefore presented concrete measures in order to achieve this goal.

The new new 'Youth Opportunities Initiative' presented by the Commission, calls on Member States to work on preventing early school leaving; helping youngsters develop skills relevant to the labour market; ensuring work experience and on-the-job training and helping young people find a first good job. In addition, the Commission has put forward a set of concrete actions to be financed directly by EU funds.

The Commission also urges Member States to make better use of the European Social Fund which still has €30 billion of funding uncommitted to projects. Thus, it proposes actions financed directly by the Commission in the new 'Youth Opportunities initiative' such as use €4 millions to help Member States set up 'youth guarantee' schemes to ensure young people are either in employment, education or training within four months of leaving school or dedicate €1.3 million to support the setting up of apprenticeships through the European Social Fund. Other actions foreseen under the initiative are using €3 million of the European Social Fund Technical Assistance to support Member States in the setting up of support schemes for young business starters and social entrepreneurs; gearing funds as much as possible towards placements in enterprises and targeting at least 130,000 placements in 2012 under ERASMUS and Leonardo da Vinci; provide financial assistance in 2012-2013 to 5,000 young people to find a job in another Member State through the 'Your first EURES job' initiative; reinforce the budget allocation for the European Voluntary Service; present a framework for high quality traineeships in the EU; and to ensure around 600 further exchanges under Erasmus for entrepreneurs in 2012.

The Commission wants to mobilise all actors concerned because there currently are 5 million unemployed young people in the EU today and 7.5 million young people between 15 and 24 are currently neither in employment nor in education or training. This concerns not only low-skilled young people having left school too early, but more and more university graduates who cannot find a first job.