2019 Evaluation of the support to youth employment by the Youth Employment Initiative and the European Social Fund
Date: 2018-07-20
Institutions: Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, European Commission
Subjects: EU employment policy, employment policy



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EVALUATION ROADMAP  






Roadmaps aim to inform citizens and stakeholders about the Commission's work to allow them to provide feedback and to participate effectively in future consultation activities. Citizens and stakeholders are in particular invited to provide views on the Commission's understanding of the problem and possible solutions and to share any relevant information that they may have.






Title of the evaluation




Evaluation of the support to youth employment by the Youth Employment Initiative and the European Social Fund






Lead DG – responsible unit 




DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, G.4 Evaluation and Impact Assessment Unit






Indicative Planning 


(planned start date and completion date)




Q3 2018 – Q4 2019






Additional Information




http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1176&langId=en






The Roadmap is provided for information purposes only. It does not prejudge the final decision of the Commission on whether this initiative will be pursued or on its final content. All elements of the initiative described by the document, including its timing, are subject to change.









A. Context, purpose and scope of the evaluation






Context 






The EU supports Member States in reducing youth unemployment rates in line with the wider EU 2020 target of achieving a 75% employment rate for the working-age population.


The Youth Employment Initiative is one of the main EU financial resources to support the implementation of Youth Guarantee schemes. It was launched and integrated into the European Social Fund to provide support to young people living in regions where youth unemployment was higher than 25% in 2012, with a total budget of 6.4 billion euro for the programming period 2014-2020. In April 2017, it was decided to increase the total budget of the initiative by 2.4 billion covering regions with youth unemployment higher than 25% in 2016. 


The Youth Employment Initiative exclusively supports young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs), including the long-term unemployed or those not registered as job-seekers. It ensures that in parts of Europe where the challenges are most acute, young people can receive targeted support. 


The Youth Guarantee is a political commitment taken by the Member States in April 2013 and launched by the Commission, to give every person under the age of 25 (or 29 if the Member State decides so) a good-quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. Since 2014, more than 3.5 million young people have taken up each year an offer of employment, education, traineeship or apprenticeship. The Youth Employment Initiative supports the implementation of the Youth Guarantee in the eligible regions of 20 Member States.


The Youth Employment Initiative is also complementary to other actions undertaken at national level, supported in particular by the European Social Fund, which aim at implementing youth employment schemes or reinforce systems of lifelong learning, vocational training or skill development or other instruments such as Eures.


A synthetic analysis of the first years of the Youth Employment Initiative was finalised in 2016, followed by a Communication on the situation of the Youth Guarantee and Youth Employment Initiative three years on. These two documents will be used as a basis for the evaluation. The baseline for the evaluation is the set of measures to support Youth Employment in place at EU level before the launch of the Youth Employment Initiative, in 2013. 


The Commission proposal for the next programming period (European Social Fund+) foresees a dedicated earmarking of the support to youth. 






Purpose and scope 






This evaluation aims at taking stock of the results of youth employment related EU support by Youth Employment Initiative and the European Social Fund for the period 2014-2018, and builds in particular on the mandatory evaluation of Youth Employment Initiative by MS by December 2018.  The evaluation will also assess to what extent the Youth Employment Initiative contributed to reaching the objectives of the Youth Guarantee.


The conclusions of the evaluation should be used in the implementation of the final stages of the existing Youth Employment Initiative and European Social Fund programmes dedicated to youth employment. 


Moreover, the results of the evaluation could feed into the next programming period, by providing lessons, notably as regards cost-effectiveness, outreach and target groups most in need, thus supporting the negotiation of the operational programmes of the European Social Fund Plus  and the design of operations by the Member States. It will also pave the way for the ex-post evaluation of the European Social Fund by the Commission to be completed by December 2024.


The evaluation will assess the effectiveness, efficiency, relevance and EU added value of youth employment  activities funded by Youth Employment Initiative and other European Social Fund actions during the period 2014-2018. It will also address the complementarity and coherence with other initiatives in this field during the period concerned, training, vocational education and lifelong learning, skills, mobility of young workers…). 


Amongst other subjects, the evaluation will assess whether the youth most in need of assistance were adequately reached (also geographically), the quality of job and training offers, and which type of support has been the most effective. Likewise the administrative burden of EU support and the related programming and implementation arrangements as well as the suitability of the age limit should be evaluated, and the visibility of EU support. Finally, the suitability of the monitoring framework should be assessed. 


The evaluation will cover all Member States, with a particular emphasis on the regions covered by the Youth Employment Initiative. 






B. Better regulation






Consultation of citizens and stakeholders 






The consultation procedure will aim at collecting the views and opinions of stakeholders, beneficiaries, participants and the public in general regarding the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and added value of the youth oriented initiatives funded through the European Social Fund.


The consultation activities initially foreseen are:


An open consultation for the general public, including a targeted strand for young people, but also organisations involved in the management of operational programmes (such as: Member States, managing authorities/intermediate bodies, social and other partners represented in the monitoring committee). The consultation should address notably the visibility, outreach, usefulness, relevance and effectiveness of the support to youth employment through Youth Employment Initiative and European Social Fund. The open public consultation should run in parallel to the stakeholder consultation. The public consultation will be actively promoted by the Commission through the Europa website and social media.


Additional consultation tasks, notably in the form of interviews, case studies will take place during the data collection and analysis phases of the work carried out by the external contractors.


Finally, the Commission will make use of events and fora on youth employment related fields to continue the consultation of stakeholders during the implementation of the evaluation. Such of these events are, for example the European Social Fund Committee and Technical Working Group meetings, European Social Fund transnational cooperation network on youth employment, the European Social Fund Evaluation Network, etc.


The synopsis report (a summary of all consultation activities' results) will be published on the consultation page once all consultation activities are closed. The views obtained through the consultation process mentioned above will feed into the work of the external contractors.







Data collection and methodology 






The evaluation will be based in the first place in the information collected through the common output and result indicators applicable to Youth Employment Initiative national programmes and European Social Fund. This information is uploaded into the data collection systems and communicated annually to the Commission through the Annual Implementation Reports of the programmes.


The evaluation will also rely on Youth Employment Initiative evaluation reports produced by the Member States by the end of 2018 and relevant European Social Fund evaluations. In particular, it will seek to build on impact evaluations, with a specific focus on counterfactual impact evaluations. 


Additional data collection and analysis will be carried out through a combination of work by external consultants (case studies, focus groups…) and the use of the socioeconomic model Rhomolo developed by the Joint Research Centre.