"Dear ASEF Governor Dr Jacques Poos,
Dear Ambassador Zhang Yan,
Dear Professor Frank Leprévost,
Dear young leaders,
It is with great pleasure that I address this 1st ASEF Young Leaders Summit. I am particularly proud that this first edition of the ASEF Young Leaders’ Summit takes place in Luxembourg ! I am convinced that it will contribute to a new dynamism for the ASEM relations and strengthen ties between Asia and Europe. I hope that the Young Leaders’ Summit will become a regular side event to ASEM high level meetings. All of you will shape the future of your countries and of our two continents, and I find it essential that we, leaders of today, listen to you, leaders of tomorrow, when we meet in the ASEM context.
To open this event, let me say a few words about Luxembourg and our Presidency of the EU Council.
Strengthening ties between Asia and Europe
As a founding member of the European Union, Luxembourg has witnessed all the changes and developments of the European integration process. From the initial project, which brought together 6 countries, to the community of 28 member states representing over 500 million citizens, Europe has evolved considerably.
First and foremost, Luxembourg sees this Presidency – our 12th Presidency - as a genuine opportunity. We are committed to show our attachment to the European integration project and to share our expertise and extensive tradition in this field. We want to contribute in a positive way to the European integration,as we have done over the past decades: we help to build bridges and to reconcile diverging positions.
To do this, we have chosen an approach based on outreach and openness: listening to the citizens, supporting enterprises, cooperating with partners and institutions and all this with a view to act in the general interest of the European Union.
We want to build bridges inside the European Union, but also with other continents and regions in the world. Within ASEM, a fruitful and intensive dialogue has been in place for 2 decades now on many subjects of mutual interest. Employment and social policies are one of the pillars of this dialogue. The 5th ASEM Labour and Employment Ministers Conference will take place in 3-4 December 2015 in Sofia, Bulgaria and I believe that the discussions and exchanges that you will have during this Young Leaders’ Summit will have a concrete impact.
The joint Call for Action on Entrepreneurship and Youth Employment that you will work out during this meeting will certainly contribute to the discussions of the ASEM Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, but will also feed into the discussions that will be held in Sofia, in particular in the areas of internationalization of workforce and mobility of young people between the two continents.
Act against Youth Unemployment
In times of economic uncertainties it is even more important to foster job-creation, mobility and social cohesion in Asia and Europe. Your Summit is dedicated to Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship. The Luxembourg Presidency, too, has been very active on these issues. Let me address some of the initiatives that the European Union has been developing in order to act against youth unemployment:
First of all, we have to assess the current situation. In August 2015, 4.6 million young people (aged under 25) were unemployed in the EU. In other words, the
unemployment rate of the under 25 was 20.4% in the EU, the highest rates being in Spain (48.8%), Greece (48.3%), Croatia (43.5%) and Italy (40.7%). About 7 million young people in the 15-24 age group are neither in employment nor in education nor in training. This represents about 12% of all the young people in the EU. In addition, long-term unemployment of the young is still extremely high and the young are over-represented in precarious working conditions.42% of young people are on temporary contracts. These figures are clear evidence that we are still far from having solved the youth unemployment problem in Europe.
Youth Guarantee
In order to reverse this trend, the EU has supported the idea of a Youth Guarantee in April 2013 which should ensure "… that all young people under the age of 25 years receive a good-quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education". Since the adoption of the Youth Guarantee recommendation, EU Member States have made substantial efforts to implement their country specific plans, bringing about important structural reforms and setting up new employment strategies specifically for the young.
Today, all the EU Member States have implemented the Youth Guarantee. In Luxembourg, it was officially launched in June 2014 and since then, it has been strengthened to support the young, in the best possible way.
The total EU budget of this initiative is 6.4 billion EURO for the period 2014-2020.
In addition, the European Investment Bank, which you will be visiting on Wednesday, has also been supporting youth employment with its "Skills and Jobs – Investing for Youth” programme. Since its launch mid-2013, 13.7 billion EUR in loans were signed to support Europe’s youth. These loans went to SMEs and to educational institutions. The initiative supported job creation for some 800 000 young people. Some 26 000 new jobs for youth would not have been created without EIB support.
This is a very small cost compared to the long-term implications of youth unemployment. We cannot risk the livelihoods of millions of young people; the social and economic price is worth every effort that we can do in order to encourage and help young people find their way to sustainable jobs.
In this sense, cooperation is a key word in the implementation of the Youth Guarantee and fostering of opportunities for the young, mainly for those neither in employment, education or training. All of the actors, public and private, must combine their efforts, in the best possible way, in favour of the young people. To do so, employers must also be strongly involved as they are mainly the ones creating jobs.
Invest in people, jobs and entrepreneurship
Even though these different support programmes have helped young people find a job, training or get back to school, we still need to invest in quality job creation, education and vocational training and entrepreneurship.This has been one of the leitmotivs of the Luxembourg Presidency: investing in people, fostering economic growth and job creation.
First, we need to invest in people. We need to make sure that young people can acquire new skills and key competences. In an ever changing knowledge economy, skills need to be updated at a faster rate and at shorter intervals. The digital revolution requires new competences. There is a risk of mismatch in our economies between supply and demand of skills. Without on-the-job work experience, many of our young people will not be competitive. As stated in the Hanoi Declaration of the ASEM Labour and Employment Ministerial meeting in 2012 , we shall provide youngsters with skills matching the labour market needs and continue our efforts in the vocational education and training programmes.
Second, we need to invest in jobs for young people. Without new jobs, all investment in skills is lost. The economy is slowly recovering after the financial and economic crisis; a window of opportunity has opened. Economic recovery is still relatively fragile but gaining ground. We need to strengthen this positive juncture. We have to focus on growth, investment and innovation. Moreover, we need to find instruments that allow existing businesses, and particularly SMEs, to take the leap of faith and expand their businesses or and invest in new activities; thereby creating new jobs. ASEM Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)s cooperation has been part of the ASEM efforts in reinforcing economic and trade Asia and Europe, and we need to continue these efforts.
As for Entrepreneurship, we also need instruments allowing young people to set up their own businesses, along with the necessary mentoring for their projects. Entrepreneurship is an important part of the solution to our problem. To make it work, we need a structural framework that gives the appropriate financial basis to launch new businesses.
Young entrepreneurs – and I hope that many of you will choose that path - have an important role to play. You support job creation and economic growth. You contribute to design a better future, a more sustainable use of our natural resources and you help shape a more inclusive society.
Dear friends,
Let us further deepen this co-operation and exchange within ASEM on good practices. As young leaders, you have the opportunity to shape the future of the Asia-Europe relations. As a not-so-young leader, I know that when you empower young people, you empower the whole society of today and tomorrow. In that sense, I wish you all fruitful discussions and connexions, a wonderful time in Luxembourg, especially if you are visiting for the first time, and remember that Mahatma Gandhi once said: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world". Thank you."