The report in more detail

According to the executive summary of the report, its main objective is to suggest ways in which young Maltese people might be helped to enter the labour market, satisfy their ambitions and expectations in life and contribute to the wealth-creation process of the country.

The GWU Youths said they were “very concerned about the hardships, both psychological and financial, that the young unemployed face, especially if they experience unemployment over a long period of time.”

Experiences and studies in other countries show that unemployment over a long period of time also has repercussions on their ambitions. It is also known that the longer they are unemployed, the more difficult it is for them to go on to enjoy a good career and the greater the possibility of facing exclusion.

The position paper looked at the current local situation and reviewed how eight other countries are dealing with this problem. The executive council said young people should no longer be seen as a problem but as an asset to the country.

The GWU Youth recognises that Maltese young people are now asking that their voices be heard, that their issues be addressed and that their roles be recognised. Rather than being viewed as a target group for which employment must be found, they want to be accepted as partners for development, helping to chart a common course and shaping the future for everyone.

Schemes in other European countries

For a long period of time, young people were seen as a problem especially as regards integrating them into the labour market. In fact, during the beginning of the 1990s, youth unemployment was on the agenda of most European countries.

Their efforts were both preventive and curative. A preventive intervention tries to counteract the processes that generate a problem; a curative intervention tries to deal with their consequences. Regarding youth employment, a curative approach will find out where the young unemployed are and try to alleviate their situation and integrate them into the labour market; a preventive approach will analyse the causes of youth unemployment and devise strategies to prevent it.

The study looked at the situation in Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The comparative exercise gave a glimpse of what is going on in Europe with regard to schemes and strategies aimed at addressing the problem of youth unemployment. Most of them are designed either to match the skill base of the unemployed youth with the jobs available or else to introduce youth to the labour market, even if for a limited period of time.

In conclusion, the report said its main aim was to stimulate discussion on how to solve the problem of youth unemployment. The authors hope it will bring together the main stakeholders, government, unions, employers and the young people themselves, to discuss the issues and act on the viable possibilities they identify.