• To protect young people’s rights from exploitation, promote a distinction between professional and non-professional traineeships and apprenticeships, insisting in the necessity that professional traineeships should always be paid.
• Underscore the role of regional and local authorities in the fields of employment, training, and education policies, and promote that partnerships in all phases of the Youth Guarantee should include local and regional authorities, especially during the mapping and outreach phase of the youth guarantee.
• Promote a definition of "quality offer" containing specific criteria regarding the sustainability and matching of the job opportunities offered through the youth guarantee and and increased level of homogeneity.
• Propose skills to be considered as relevant in the context of the youth Guarantee, such as green skills, digital skills, social skills and language skills.
Ms. Romy Karier, rapporteur of the opinion on Youth Employment Support: A Bridge to Jobs for the Next Generation Reinforcing the Youth Guarantee, was able to present the views of the CoR on youth unemployment during several events, to which she participated as a high level speaker.
She was invited to take the floor during the following events :
A Bridge to Jobs - how to support young people’s #TransitionToWork since COVID-19 on Wednesday from the Goethe Institute, 30 September 2020.
Next Talent Generation EU: COVID-19 Challenge, training in European Affairs for young people abroad", that took place on the 17th December 2020, and was organised by the Finova foundation.
23 March 2021 online event in cooperation with DG EMPL-European Alliance of Apprenticeships EAfA entitled ''Upskilling and reskilling in the health sector".
The European Youth Conference, organised by the Slovenian Presidency of the EU, in September 2021.
YEP Forum "Young Local Leaders for the Future of Europe", 18 November 2021
Conference in Barcelona on the occasion of the Europe’s Day and the European Year of Youth, together with the Delegation of the European Commission in Barcelona, May 2022.
Moreover, for two consecutive years, Ms. Karier has been the CoR representative, as member of the jury, for the European Youth Capitals award, organised by the European Youth Forum.
Given its important involvement in youth, the CoR has been invited to take part to every sessions of the European Commission national coordinators and stakeholders' meeting for the European Year of Youth, as requested by the CoR in several instances.
THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
- highlights the important role of regional and local authorities in the fields of employment, training, education and youth policies, and suggests that partnerships in all phases of the Youth Guarantee should include local and regional authorities. This is particularly the case regarding the mapping phase and the outreach phase, in which local and regional authorities could be a bridge between different stakeholders such as the social partners, educational institutions, youth organisations, public employment services and the local and regional business sector;
- considers it essential to define clear and precise binding criteria regarding the quality of the Youth Guarantee offers of employment, education, training, and apprenticeships. This could be achieved by assessing the level of match between what is being offered and the participant's profile, by ensuring the offer respects young people’s employment and social rights, by guaranteeing the offer will enable sustainable integration into the labour market and by including the quality of offers in the monitoring and data collection processes of the Youth Guarantee;
- supports the idea of promoting skills that are relevant to the job market and agrees with the emphasis on digital skills, managerial skills, entrepreneurship and autonomy and skills relevant for the green transition; insists, however, on the need to promote language skills as a priority so as to increase young people's chances of integrating into the labour market, especially in those regions where language skills are particularly important, such as cross-border regions and regions with a tourism orientated economy, and finds it regrettable that this has not been included in the new proposal;
- recommends enhancing the evaluation of all measures taken under the Youth Guarantee schemes, so that more evidence-based policies and measures can be developed on the basis of what works, where and why, thus ensuring an effective and efficient use of resources.