The Youth Summit 2015 on last Mar. 26th 2015 in Brussels, organised by European Entrepreneurs CEA-PME, Friedrich-Ebert Foundation and the CEMR-German Section, was a great success, particularly looking at the numbers of mostly young attendees, but also for the very high level of speakers and discussants, that gave to the summit the quality inputs that it needed.
Under the title “Europe’s Youth: For a better professional training, more mobility, youth employment and new entrepreneurs“ more than 200 representatives of many stakeholder organisations, youths and decision makers gathered at the State Representation of Baden Württemberg to the EU to discuss which are the priority issues to be addressed today, to fight youth unemployment, the “guillotine for Europe’s future” as Mr. Mario Ohoven, president of European Entrepreneurs CEA-PME, has put it.
While for SMEs the main cause of the current dramatic situation on the job market for young people is the “skills mismatch” – the inadequate professional preparation of youths for the job market, the president of the European Parliament, Mr. Martin Schulz, underlined the urgent need for a solution of the Euro-crisis in a consensual way among the European Member States, to re-launch the EU’s economy and the new uptake of jobs and growth, as well as the great importance of better access to risk capital and a “second chance” reform policy for young entrepreneurs to be able to fail and retry a business undertaking.
The speakers that followed, Mr. Detlef Eckert, Director of Directorate C (Europe 2020) of the DG Employment and Social Affairs, Ms. Valérie Loirat of AFCCRE and the Franco-German Youth Office, as well as the General Director of CONFAPI and the President of the Polish Chamber of Employers IPP, made clear that the European Commission, the local governments, as well as SME assocations and their associate companies, are well aware of the problems, and work with strong efforts and intelligent approaches for its solution, in the interest of the European society, its youths and the enterprises.
The discussants of the panel discussion, moderated by Ms. Maria Jepsen of the European Trade Union Institute, allowed to understand the different points of views of Members of the European Parliament (Ms. Sabine Verheyen, EPP, Mr. Brando Benifei and Mr. Peter Simon, both S&D), as well as of the trade unions (Mr. Salvatore Marra, President of the Youth Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation) and entrepreneurs (Mr. Jacques de Lalaing, entrepreneur in renewable energies and president of the Belgo-German Society).
