Urban dialogues (1): Tacklingunemployment with Europe’s cities
12 May 2015, 18:00 – 19:30, The Centre
Unemployment is one of Europe’s most urgent challenges. At the end of 2014, 24 million Europeans were unemployed, 11.9 million of whom were long term unemployed and five million were under the age of 25’. The consequences of unemployment are concentrated in our cities, where 75% of Europe’s population lives. In addition to the economic consequences, unemployment can have a serious impact on social cohesion. Cities are working to make labour markets more inclusive and address in-work poverty and unstable employment. But pressure is building on local employment and social services, which are struggling in times of reduced public budgets. And resources from European and national level to tackle the crises do not always meet the people most in need.
How can we speed up results on the ground for the young and long term unemployed?
What role does local knowledge about skills and labour markets play when policy makers design new initiatives to tackle unemployment?
What kind of partnerships between the EU, national and city governments can we envisage to tackle this crisis?
Those are some of the questions that will be addressed during the debate, which will be moderated by Ryan Heath, The Centre. EUROCITIES recently launched a Declaration on Work which Daniel Termont, Mayor of Ghent and vice-president of EUROCITIES, will discuss with other panelists and the audience.
The debate is the first in a series of Urban Dialogues which the Centre and EUROCITIES organise in partnership focusing on how better to tackle some of EU’s current challenges by joining up European and local urban solutions.
See: http://www.edelman.be/events/urban-dialogues-tackling-unemployment-with-europes-cities/
and on Eurocities website http://www.eurocities.eu/eurocities/news/Urban-dialogues-a-new-partnership-WSPO-9VKHT5