No one left behind: Fighting youth unemployment and inactivity across Europe 

Youth unemployment remains a persistent challenge across Europe, with significant social and economic implications. As of early 2024, the EU youth unemployment rate stood at around 14.5%, with stark disparities between countries and regions.

This issue is not only about joblessness — it represents a loss of human potential, weakens social cohesion, and risks the long-term economic resilience of Europe. Prolonged unemployment among young people leads to:

• Skill degradation
• Discouragement
• Lower lifetime earnings

Moreover, it increases the risk of poverty and social exclusion, eroding trust in democratic institutions. Fighting youth unemployment is essential to ensure a thriving, innovative, and competitive Europe. Targeted measures, such as improving vocational education, supporting entrepreneurship, and aligning education systems with labor market needs, are key to empowering young Europeans and sustaining the EU’s economic dynamism.  

Interreg Europe and its Policy Learning Platform are taking on the challenge, as demonstrated through peer reviews performed on behalf of two very different regions: 

• La Réunion, an outermost French region in the Indian Ocean
• Schleswig-Holstein, a region in the north of Germany

Co-creating actions for school perseverance – social innovation by La Réunion 

The French outermost region of La Réunion is pressured by high rates of early school leavers. Each year, around 3.100 pupils leave school without graduation. Also, the rate of NEETs, i.e., young people not in employment, education, or training, reaches 26%, i.e., twice as high as the national level, compared to a European average of about 11%. The Regional Council of La Réunion has therefore made the issue a priority of its ongoing mandate and reached out to the Interreg Europe community – an innovative move at the local level – to set up a new action plan to prevent and combat early school leaving. 

In November 2023, the Interreg Europe interregional peer review outlined the need for better stakeholder coordination, putting the spotlight on the potential of an integrated governance approach. In particular, the group of European peers recommended the preparation of a joint vision and action plan, co-created with the region’s ecosystem for education, professional training, and labour market measures. 

Under the lead of La Réunion‘s Vice-President for Education, Céline Sitouze, the region 'walked the talk' and organised an interactive and international workshop on school perseverance between 2 and 4 April 2025. Over two afternoons, more than 150 education and labour practitioners teamed up in changing settings to jointly elaborate and prioritize concrete measures supporting school perseverance and NEETs integration.

A delegation of seven European peers and the Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform team were actively involved. The seminar paved the ground for concerted action and enhanced engagement of the relevant authorities on the regional level – the Regional Council, the academic authorities, and the representative of the French State, giving emphasis to 

• Better connecting with the youth
• Establishing governance structures to open up silos
• Reinforcing efforts to link the 'world of schools' and the 'world of companies'

Integrating youth into the labour market in Schleswig-Holstein 

Although being a region with a comparatively strong economic background and low unemployment rates, with a rate of NEETs around 8%, slightly below the German average and the European average. The State Government of Schleswig-Holstein has set the goal of increasing the attractiveness of vocational education and training and thus helping to reduce the number of NEETs.

As the responsible authority, the Schleswig-Holstein Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SHIBB) is therefore tasked with exploring ways in which more young people and young adults can find their way into the vocational education and training system and fewer pupils and trainees drop out of training prematurely or do not start a vocational qualification in the first place. In addition, people who have already left the system without success are also to be qualified via the vocational education and training system. 

The SHIBB leads the region’s efforts in fostering collaboration between schools, businesses, and other stakeholders to create an inclusive and responsive VET system. However, like many other regions in Europe, Schleswig-Holstein faces significant hurdles that prevent many young individuals from entering employment, such as a lack of qualifications and skill mismatches, low motivation, limited mobility (especially in rural areas), and unrealistic expectations about working conditions and wages. 

Looking for new approaches to tackle those challenges, SHIBB also reached out to the Interreg Europe community and hosted an interregional peer review, including a representative of La Réunion, in December 2024. Besides showing a great readiness to take up a number of the recommendations drafted by the peers, the SHIBB also mentioned that those recommendations will be carefully considered for the development of a comprehensive reform of the regional policy for the transition from school to work, one of the main priorities identified during the peer review.