Europe 2020 - A European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth

In 2000 was launched the Lisbon strategy, with among its objectives, to reach an overall employment rate of 70% by 2010. A decade after, all the experts agree to say that Lisbon strategy was a failure, especially when it comes to youth unemployment problem across Europe. Close to six million young Europeans are not able to find a job and thus earn a living. Europe 2020 was imagined as a successor of the Lisbon strategy to help Europe emerge stronger from the economic and financial crisis.

Europe 2020 has been imagined as a new start, including in the field of social inclusion and youth. As President Barroso announced in his September 2009 Political Guidelines: "Europe is a reality in everyday life also through exchange initiatives. At a time of economic and social crisis, I feel very strongly that it is of particular importance to further the access of the young generation to the European dimension. To this end, I propose to expand existing instruments like Erasmus into a new EU youth and mobility initiative, as part of the EU 2020 strategy." One of the three “growth” priorities that the Europe 2020 paper is putting forward is linked to the fight against youth unemployment: “Inclusive growth: fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion” is the third mentioned objective. According to those objectives, the document also enumerates more concrete headlines targets such as “75 % of the population aged 20-64 should be employed” or “The share of early school leavers should be under 10% and at least 40% of the younger generation should have a tertiary degree”.
According to the paper, those targets are supposed to be underpinned by national and international actions.
After the Council has called for concrete action, the European Commission puts forward seven flagship initiatives to catalyse progress under each priority theme. Among those, one of them