Minister of Education, Children and Youth, Claude Meisch, yesterday officially welcomed the participants of the Young Leaders Summit of the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) at the Youth Hostel of Luxembourg City.
The Summit assembles young people aged 18-30 and influential people from the political, economic and academic sectors to develop solutions to the issues faced by the current young generation. Current circumstances are difficult for this demographic, with the economic crisis taking a long time to exit and difficult labour market conditions.
As Asia and Europe are facing similar situations in terms of large numbers of unemployed youth, Minister Meisch emphasised the importance of encouraging young people to develop their sense of initiative, creativity and entrepreneurship. According to the Minister, schools must offer this demographic the opportunity to discover what it means to be an entrepreneur, and lay the groundwork which will enable young people to continue learning throughout their lives.
Whilst diplomas and qualifications of formal education remain essential, the Minister also stressed that the acquisition of knowledge is not only carried out at school and applied in the workplace, with children and youth instead continuously learning through everyday, formal and informal interactions.
He reasoned that formal and informal education must therefore combine efforts to ensure the inclusion of all children and young people, irregardless of social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The education and care of young children was cited as of particular importance, with fair and affordable access to quality education to be guaranteed from an early age in order to enable children to develop their potential from the earliest possible stage.
The Minister therefore welcomed the initiative of the ASEF and the commitment of young people from the two continents.
Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Jean Asselborn, today provided the opening speech at the Summit, making particular reference to the issues of job creation, mobility and social cohesion. During his speech, Minister Asselborn emphasised the importance of collaboration between Europe and Asia with a view to combatting youth unemployment.
"About 7 million young people in the 15-24 age group are neither in employment nor in education nor in training," commented the Minister. "This represents about 12% of all the young people in the EU. In addition, long-term unemployment of the young is still extremely high and the young are over-represented in precarious working conditions. 42% of young people are on temporary contracts. These figures are clear evidence that we are still far from having solved the youth unemployment problem in Europe".
He continued: "All of the actors, public and private, must combine their efforts, in the best possible way, in favour of the young people. To do so, employers must also be strongly involved as they are mainly the ones creating jobs".
Photo by MAEE (Jean Asselborn at Young Leaders Summit)
