EU local and regional authorities contributing to the mid-term review of Europe Assessment of the "Youth on the Move" flagship initiative

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1 EU local and regional authorities contributing to the mid-term review of Europe 2020 Assessment of the "Youth on the Move" flagship initiative Over two years after its adoption, the Committee of the Regions will take stock of the Europe 2020 flagship initiative Youth on the Move in a conference to be held on 13 December 2012 in Brussels. This conference will be the first of a series of CoR events and monitoring initiatives surrounding the mid-term review of Europe 2020 in By participating in this survey, you will: ensure that your views are taken into account in the debate at the conference; contribute to the fourth CoR Monitoring Report on Europe 2020, to be published in October 2013; contribute to CoR consultative activity in this field over the coming months, particularly in relation to President Barroso's announcement in his State of the Union address on 12 September 2012 of a Youth Package establishing a youth guarantee scheme and a quality framework to facilitate vocational training; contribute to the mid-term review of Europe 2020 in IF YOU WISH TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS SURVEY, PLEASE FILL IN THIS QUESTIONNAIRE IN ANY EU LANGUAGE, USING THE SPACES PROVIDED, AND RETURN IT IN TEXT FORMAT TO: europe2020@cor.europa.eu by 5 November 2012 For more information on this survey and for details of how to join the Europe 2020 Monitoring Platform, go to: The questionnaire will soon be available on this website in all languages. EN

2 Contributor information 1 Name of sender: Contact details: (address, telephone, ) On behalf of: (name of local or regional authority) Type of organisation Country: DIRECTORATE GENERAL FOR YOUTH GENERALITAT DE CATALUNYA C/ CALÀBRIA BARCELONA smolins@gencat.cat GENERALITAT DE CATALUNYA City/Town/Municipality Region County/Province Association of local and/or regional authorities Other (please specify) Spain Member of the EUROPE 2020 Monitoring Platform: Yes No Policy challenges and responses at regional and local level BOX 1 -Youth on the Move: Basic Information The Europe 2020 flagship initiative Youth on the Move is aimed at improving young people's education and employability; reducing youth unemployment; increasing the youth employment rate. These aims are in line with the Europe 2020 EU headline targets to be achieved by 2020: 75% employment rate for the working-age population (20-64 years); at least 40% of years old should have completed tertiary or equivalent education; reduce early school-leaving to less than 10%. 1 Privacy Statement: The follow-up to your contribution requires that your personal data (name, contact details, etc.) be processed in a file. All the answers to the questions are voluntary. Your replies will be kept for a period of 5 years after the receipt of your questionnaire. Should you require any further information or wish to exercise your rights under Regulation (EC) No. 45/2001 (e.g. to access, rectify, or delete your data), please contact the data controller at europe2020@cor.europa.eu. If necessary, you may also contact the CoR Data Protection Officer (data.protection@cor.europa.eu). You have the right of recourse to the European Data Protection Supervisor at any time ( Please note that the questionnaire with your contribution and your contact details will be published online. Your questionnaire may be transmitted to CoR Rapporteurs and other EU institutions for information. Should you not agree to this, please inform us accordingly.

3 1) What are the main challenges currently facing your region/city in terms of employment, unemployment, education and international mobility of young people? The main challenges facing Catalonia in terms of the areas described above are: - employment: despite the existence of a high youth unemployment rate, in terms of the labour market the following can be singled out: high skilling of young people, and a high level of young entrepreneurs; - unemployment: the youth unemployment rate is currently very high, despite being the lowest in Spain; - education: in this area we have a high early school-leaving rate, and an imbalance between the supply of trained people and labour market demand. - international mobility: increasing international mobility of young people. In the past there has not been a high level of mobility, although in Catalonia the mobility rate is higher than in the rest of the country (first and foremost through Erasmus grants and the Youth in Action programme (young people's exchanges, European volunteering service, etc.)). In recent years the number of young people seeking work in Europe (principally), as in the rest of the world, has risen. The regional government plans to provide ordered, informed support for this mobility. 2) Which of the aims of Youth on the Move (listed in box 1) are most relevant in view of the challenges currently facing your region/city? The aims of the Youth on the Move initiative that are most relevant to our challenges are: - reducing youth unemployment, - improving young people's education and employability. 3) To help meet these objectives, your country has set its own corresponding targets, which you can find at To what extent are the targets set by your country appropriate to your local situation? Please explain. 4) Please briefly describe what kind of policy programmes/actions are being implemented in your city/region to tackle the challenges addressed in Youth on the Move. 1. Support for local youth policies. 2. Development of the Red Nacional de Emancipación juvenil (Spanish national youth independence network) and other services and facilities for young people 3. Regional initiatives/programmes, such as: school-work transition, Formula Joven (youth formula), getting young people to move back to rural areas, etc. 4. International approach to young people and youth bodies (training, advice, etc.) 5) In the policy programmes/actions mentioned above, have you introduced additional indicators/targets? If so, please explain which ones and why they were necessary. The inclusion of indicators is currently being finalised; in order to achieve good medium- and longterm evaluation a good base of indicators needs to be built up.

4 How is "Youth on the Move" relevant to your city or region? BOX 2 -Youth on the Move: main lines of action and initiatives Youth on the Move focuses on four main lines of action: a. Supporting lifelong learning, to develop key competences and learning outcomes in line with labour market needs. Actions recommended to Member States include, among others, tackling early school leaving, validating non-formal and informal learning, promoting apprenticeship-type vocational training and high quality traineeships; b. Raising the percentage of young people in higher education or equivalent, by reforming and modernising higher education in order to make it more attractive and open to the rest of the world. Among other measures, this should be done by benchmarking university performances and by adopting an EU strategy to make European higher education and academic cooperation more attractive worldwide; c. Supporting learning mobility, by removing obstacles that prevent young people from spending part of their educational career abroad, creating a scoreboard to monitor progress in this regard and directly supporting young people's access to employment opportunities through the intra-eu initiative Your first EURES Job; d. Improving young people's employment prospects through actions at EU and national level aimed at facilitating the transition from school to work, reducing labour market segmentation and facilitating self-employment and entrepreneurship by young people. Public Employment Services are to play a key role in this regard, contributing in the form of a Youth Guarantee ensuring that all young people are in a job, in education or in training within four months of leaving school. Specific actions support young entrepreneurs. Specific initiatives at EU level include: The Youth Opportunities Initiative, to fight against early school leaving by getting young people back into school or training and giving graduates their first work experience; Your First EURES Job, to help young Europeans find work in other EU countries; Youth@Work, an awareness-raising campaign involving the EURES network and the national public employment services, to help young jobseekers find jobs in SMEs or become self-employed or set up their own business. 6) Which of the lines of actions shown in Box 2 are most relevant to you, in the sense that they have encouraged you to set more ambitious policy goals at regional/local level? Please explain your answers. Youth@Work: because of the importance of SMEs in Catalonia and the high importance attached to entrepreneurs Youth Opportunities Initiative, to fight against early school-leaving and the high youth unemployment rate 7) Overall, what are the points of strength and the points of weakness of "Youth on the Move", as seen from your regional/local standpoint? It is a good initiative because it focuses efforts on the issue of youth unemployment; however, to some extent the fact that it is implemented in the medium term over two EU multiannual frameworks makes it difficult to execute and get to grips with.

5 8) Would you recommend any specific changes to the "Youth on the Move" flagship following Europe 2020's mid-term review in 2014? Are your country's policies relevant to your city or region? 9) Does your country's 2012 (current) National Reform Programme 2 (NRP) for Europe 2020 adequately respond to your regional/local needs in the following areas: improving youth education and employability, increasing the youth employment rate, and reducing youth unemployment? No information has been received regarding the National Reform Programme. 10) Did you have an opportunity to contribute to the drafting of your NRP in this specific policy field, even if only indirectly by way of the organisations representing cities and regions in your country? If yes, please state briefly how. As regards young people the region was not able to take part in the drafting of the National Reform Programme. 11) Looking forward to next year, would you suggest any changes in your country's NRP for 2013? If yes, please state briefly which changes. Using regional authorities to develop it, as many of the powers concerned are exclusive or shared with the state. Managing and funding Youth on the Move 12) Are any of the actions you have taken to implement Youth on the Move (stated in response to question 4) being carried out in partnership by different tiers of government? If yes, please explain briefly. Participation in the European Commission's Youth Guarantee pilot project partnership, together with the Servicio Catalan de Empleo (SOC Catalan employment service) 13) Was any multilevel-governance agreement adopted? If yes, please describe briefly. The request included: regional administration local administration civil society employers 14) With respect to your actions on Youth on the Move (stated under question 4), how are they funded? European Commission asked for funding. In other related initiatives outlined in the work plan the actions are financed from the region's budget. 15) Are you experiencing difficulties in funding these actions due to fiscal consolidation policies? 2 All available here:

6 16) What is the role of the EU Structural Funds in funding actions related to Youth on the Move objectives? 17) How should education and youth employment issues be addressed in the forthcoming Partnership Contract to be signed between your national government and the European Commission for the management of the Structural Funds under a Common Strategic Framework ? 18) Please make here any further comments you might wish on the matters dealt with in this questionnaire. SHARE YOUR GOOD PRACTICE With a view to the CoR Conference to be held on 13 December 2012, you may wish to submit an example of good practice in the fields covered by Youth on the Move. To do so, please fill in the form available on our website: JOIN THE EUROPE 2020 MONITORING PLATFORM To help carry the voice of EU cities and regions in implementation of Europe 2020 at EU level and in your country, join us. For details on how, see: THANKS FOR YOUR COOPERATION!