4. Create opportunities for youth employment and economic equity
What we stand for: Economic stability and equal opportunities are essential to unlocking the potential of European youth. Youth unemployment is one of the most pressing issues faced by our generation, with 15.3% of young people in the EU unable to find a job, compared to the 5.9% general unemployment rate in the EU. Too often, young people find themselves in a succession of unpaid internships, precarious employment conditions, or short-term and low-paid jobs. Such factors have led our generation to experience the most severe effects of the cost-of-living crisis, with 41% of 15-24-year-olds struggling to make ends meet. The fact that too many young Europeans are not able to transition smoothly between education and employment is exemplified by the 12.8% of Europeans aged 15-29 who are classified as NEETs (neither in employment, education, nor training).
But while a quarter of young people living in the EU are at risk of poverty, inequality of opportunity is increasing the disparities between the richest and poorest groups across generations. In many Member States, younger generations are seeing their chance for upward social mobility shrink compared with their parents’ generation, and opportunities are increasingly skewed towards a subset of the population. The perception of inequality amongst young people has grown to 74%.
EU&U stands for social and intergenerational equity. We want the European institutions to move beyond symbolic support and take bold, structural action to guarantee a dignified standard of living for younger generations and to ensure that they also feel the benefits of a united Europe. As a driving force for innovation, our generation will be essential to the future economy. However, the potential of young people should be valued, not exploited. The European institutions should take a stronger role in ensuring a decent standard of living for young Europeans, a right already enshrined in the European Pillar of Social Rights.
Ban unpaid traineeships: Prohibit unpaid internships and traineeships in all EU-funded programmes and issue a recommendation urging Member States to enshrine fair compensation for trainees in national legislation, ensuring equitable access to early work experience regardless of socioeconomic background.
Strengthen the school-to-work transition: Support and improve the Youth Guarantee by ensuring every offer is paid, formative, and leads to long-term opportunities, while investing in local youth centres and digital services to reach the NEETs most at risk of being left behind.
Create a living wage benchmark: Establish an EU-wide reference benchmark for a living wage that reflects regional cost-of-living data, including housing affordability. This indicator would reduce information asymmetry for prospective employees and support fair, transparent, and dignified wage bargaining. It could also be integrated into national wage-setting processes and European Semester recommendations, and would be especially valuable for young people, who are more likely to earn lower wages and are increasingly mobile across the EU.
Empower youth-led entrepreneurship: Increase access to start-up funding, microcredit, and tailored business support for young founders, reduce administrative and legal barriers to launching new ventures across EU Member States, promote entrepreneurship education and mentoring, and support the creation of university-based accelerators to turn students’ ideas into viable businesses and foster a culture of innovation, risk-taking, and resilience.
Young people today face structural barriers to social mobility unlike any generation before them. Rising housing costs, precarious employment, and unequal access to quality education mean that hard work alone is no longer enough to secure a better future. For many, the path to independence is delayed or blocked entirely. This is not because of a lack of talent or ambition, but because the current system is set up to reward inherited advantage over individual effort. When opportunity is determined by background rather than merit, trust in democratic institutions weakens, and trust in governments - as well as the European Union - fades. It is time for the EU to take this crisis seriously and ensure that the conditions for social advancement are not a privilege but a right.
Housing: a human right
Between 2010 and 2022, housing prices rose by nearly 50%, while rents increased by 18%, often outpacing wage growth. As a result, more and more young people cannot afford to live independently, with an estimated 27% of employed 25–34-year-olds still living with their parents, an increase from 24% in 2017 across the EU. Unsurprisingly, 37% of employed 18-34 year-olds live with their parents. The numbers rise to 53% and 58% in Croatia and Slovakia, respectively.
We believe housing is not only an essential requirement for young people’s dignity and stability but also a basic human right. European decision-makers are aware of this fact: since 2021, Members of the European Parliament have overwhelmingly agreed that access to adequate housing should be recognised as a fundamental European right. EU&U believes the European Union must adopt the necessary market regulations to ensure that younger generations can afford basic necessities such as housing.
Appropriate funding: Beneficiaries must be supported through adequate funding, accounting for increases in the cost of mobility (e.g., travel, accommodation) and adjusted for inflation, especially for students from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds.
Short-term and online mobilities: Expand support for short-term mobilities and integrate virtual mobility options to accommodate diverse student needs and life situations.
Crisis response mechanism: Establish a robust, flexible crisis response mechanism to support students affected by geopolitical conflicts, natural disasters or health emergencies, including solutions such as rapid deployment of alternative mobility arrangements, emergency funding, psychological or academic support, and a dedicated action line for at-risk students.
Improve synergies between research and education programmes, including applied sciences: Promote collaboration between educational and research institutions, with specific inclusion of applied sciences and professional higher education institutions.
Inclusion of students and staff with disabilities: Guarantee that students and staff with disabilities can participate in all programme activities equally, commit to removing structural, financial, and procedural barriers, provide necessary accommodations, and deploy proactive support mechanisms.
Enhance evaluation and consultation processes: Improve assessment mechanisms of the effectiveness and inclusiveness of Erasmus+ through systematic evaluation and structured stakeholder consultations, including interim assessments, impact measurement across priority areas, and feedback loops with students, educators, and institutions.
EU&U believes the EU must focus on a process of guaranteeing intergenerational equity.
Coordinate to tax inheritance and capital more fairly: Encourage Member States to reform tax systems by shifting the burden away from labour and towards wealth and inheritance, and use the European Semester to assess whether national systems reduce or reinforce intergenerational inequality.
Apply a generational fairness test: Introduce a generational test for all major EU policy and budget decisions to assess long-term and cross-age impacts, building on existing youth test models and aligning with the forthcoming EU Intergenerational Fairness Index.
Rebalance public investment toward youth: Address the growing age imbalance in public spending, where a disproportionate share of national budgets is allocated to pensions and healthcare, by increasing EU and national investment in areas that benefit younger and future generations, such as early childhood, education, housing, and green transition jobs, to ensure that fiscal policy reflects a fair and forward-looking social contract.
Support youth asset building: Ensure that all young people, regardless of their family background, have the means to grow their assets, invest in their personal development, and build financial security over time, recognising that access to wealth and capital is a key driver of long-term opportunity and intergenerational fairness.