Speech by Marianne Thyssen, European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, at Conference on the Youth Guarantee organised by the Lazio Region.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The new Commission has made jobs and growth a top priority. Today I want to focus on our efforts to tackle youth unemployment, which stands at just over 21% across the EU and nearly 23% in the euro area.
I am happy to see that those extremely high rates are finally starting to decrease, but the EU’s jobless young people are still nearly 4.9 million. To give you an idea: that is the equivalent of the total population of Ireland.
