Southern Europe: youth unemployment, educational systems and migration: What Europass can do

Europass Magazine - Juillet 2013 est paru ! Vous trouverez dans ce numéro une série d'articles rédigés par les membres du réseau Europass sur l'emploi des jeunes en Europe. Si ce thème représente un sérieux défi pour la stabilité sociale et économique du continent européen, il ouvre des perspectives et appelle à une meilleure coopération entre les États membres, les institutions européennes et, surtout, les citoyens. Lire Europass Magazine.
Southern Europe: youth unemployment, educational systems and migration: What Europass can do - pages 3-4
By Europass Coordination Team. The current dramatic macro-economic statistics in Southern Europe are well-known. In Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, economies are in recession, GDP per capita fall under the EU average, public debt explode in spite of radical budgetary cuts, inequalities are growing. In Greece, Spain and Portugal, the worst data are without doubt the unemployment rates, which reached respectively 27%, 26.8% and 17.8% in April 2013 and rise to 62.5%, 56.4% and 42.5% amongst youth. In Italy, youth unemployment is not much better: 40.2% (12% for the whole active population).
These Southern European cases challenge the whole Europe 2020 strategy, based on the principle that a knowledge economy must be the pillar of sustainable and inclusive growth. Does the situation in Southern European countries mean that the EU policy is failing? In fact, the current crisis is giving us a major lesson: countries which have maintained an innovative industry, like Germany, are more crisis-resistant than those based on low-added value services and construction, like Spain, Portugal or Greece.
Low added-value economies suff er more the eff ects of the crisis than high added-value ones. Very often, political discourses focus on the weaknesses of education and training systems to explain unemployment and innovation issues. This vision is too partial. Spain, Portugal, Greece and, to a lesser extent, Italy, show an almost complete mismatch between the evolution of the education and training system and the trends followed by the national economy. According to UNESCO, the gross enrolment rates in higher education (ISCED 5 and 6) in those countries have grown by more than 50% since 1998 – except in Italy, with an increase of „just“ 38%. In Spain, the increase is even more impressive: 88% (from 54% in 1998 to 83% in 2011)!
Amongst these higher education students, Eurostat shows that those enrolled in „science, mathematics, computing, engineering, manufacturing and construction“ represented percentages above the EU average, being in Greece even higher than the German fi gure (32.6% versus 32.1%). But, despite the Southern European eff orts to increase the educational levels of the population, the unemployment rates for highly educated young people (15 - 29 years old) remain as high as 35.6% in Greece, 26.2% in Spain, and 18% and 17.2% in Portugal and Italy in 2011. For scientifi c and engineering graduates, the situation was sometimes even worse: 36.4% in Greece and 29.1% in Spain. These data show that the issue in Greece and Spain, and to a lesser extent in Portugal and Italy, is not at the level of the education and training systems, which have clearly moved towards increasing the human capital needed in a knowledge-based economy. The real problem has been the economic structures of the countries, unable to adapt to the new needs of a competitive economy.
The long-term consequences of this mismatch can be dramatic. Not providing an opportunity to young graduates, especially in scientifi c fi elds, means that the quality of the knowledge base will quickly become obsolete. This will be an enormous loss for the society and public fi nances, where investments on education and training will not produce returns.
Unsurprisingly, migration appears as one of the solutions for the young generation. In Spain, for instance, according to a recent survey of the Real Instituto Elcano, 80% of young university graduates are ready to migrate, especially to other European countries. Indeed, 63.1% of them said that they had learnt foreign languages to anticipate such possibility. The number of new migrants is already estimated at more than 300,000. The experience with developing and transition countries shows that migration is more effi cient if it creates a win-win-win situation. Migration should be positive for the migrant, who can develop his/ her skills and competences and increase his/ her well-being. It should be positive for the receiving country, because it can fi ght its skills shortages and mismatches. It should be also positive for the sending country, thanks to remittances and the return of certain number of skilled and experienced migrants. In reality, however, this rarely happens, and migration is often characterised by „brain waste“ rather than by „brain drain“.
Nevertheless, Europe is particularly well equipped to exploit the potential of internal migration and produce a win-winwin situation. The European Union has developed recognition, transparency and validation tools to facilitate mobility. One of them is Europass, a simple and user-friendly instrument that allows a clear statement of qualifi cations, competences and skills. Europass combines a standardised format with a fl exible content to allow users to adapt to the needs of their potential employers, including putting emphasis on the increasingly relevant transversal skills such as communication, entrepreneurship or digital competences. Future developments of Europass will need to take into account the trends of migration within Europe and the related skills that the labour market request more and more.