Through YEW, we wanted to address the issue of NEETs in employment by conducting a comparative study of national laws and measures relating to youth employment and integration in the 27 EU countries. By working on these measures, we wanted to identify innovative and, above all, transferable legal levers to harmonize practices and improve legislation at the European level, in order to promote equity for young people, particularly NEETs, in terms of employment and training. Our goal was therefore to create a White Paper and translate it into several languages in order to distribute it to European leaders: national and European parliamentarians, the RAY network, and the Youth@Work network, in order to raise awareness of inequalities and propose simple, non-partisan solutions. Formulate transparent, non-partisan, and sustainable proposals that can be adopted in various national contexts, thereby strengthening the link between research, practice, and policy-making by providing a factual basis for youth policies.
We applied for this project after noticing differences in the treatment of NEETs in our work. Our goal is to provide positive solutions and drive European momentum toward harmonization and equal opportunities, regardless of young people's backgrounds. The project is part of the European Youth Strategy 2019-2027 and targets a key issue: the integration of NEETs (15-24 year olds not in employment, education, or training). Despite significant European investment, integration rates are stagnating: only seven EU countries have youth unemployment below 10%, and only two (Germany and the Czech Republic) below 5%. The identified needs are: To understand the legal and policy differences between the 27 Member States regarding the integration of young people; Proposing innovative and transferable legislative levers to reduce territorial and social inequalities; Creating a link between research, practice, and public policy, in particular through a white paper aimed at decision-makers (European Parliament, youth networks, national institutions); Providing transparency and non-partisan proposals to promote sustainable and equitable measures.