Maria-Carmen Pantea is Professor at the Social Work Department, BBU, Romania. Her research interests are in the area of Youth Studies, in particular young people’s relationship with work. She is member of the Advisory Group of the Pool of European Youth Researchers of the EU-Council of Europe Youth Partnership.  Author of Precarity and Vocational Education and Training. Craftsmanship and Employability in Romania, Palgrave (2019). PhD in Sociology (BBU), MA with Merit in Gender Studies (Central European University) and MSc in Evidence-Based Social Interventions (Oxford).

The Reinforced Youth Guarantee (RYG) is a commitment by all Member States to ensure that young people between 15 and 29 years old   receive a good quality offer of employment, education, apprenticeship or traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education. The Youth Guarantee was initiated in 2014 and reinforced in 2020 with several elements of novelty. The presentation explores the role of the RYG in supporting youth employability. It is based on desk research and 17 semi-structured interviews with policy stakeholders, including representatives of the EU social partners, members of the Public Employment Service network, national RYG coordinators, experts and academics from 12 countries. The presentation highlights several examples of practice and main implementation challenges as of 2023. It emphasises the importance of the RYG as a youth-dedicated initiative and argues that the problems leading youth people in NEET situations are not only economical, but also social. The presentation discusses the role of more regional/ local approaches, the capacity of the public employment services to deliver interventions with hard-to-reach young people and tentative implications for youth work as a sector. The research was carried out on behalf of Eurofound.