Skopje, 8 July 2021 (MIA) –  North Macedonia’s Minister of Labor and Social Policy, Jagoda Shahpaska, took part Thursday in the 2nd EU – Western Balkans ministerial meeting on employment and social affairs in Slovenia’s Brdo pri Kranju. The meeting, which focused on youth policies and more resilient and inclusive labor market integration of young people, was also attended by European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit, who pledged strong support for the implementation of Youth Guarantee schemes in all Western Balkan countries. Slovenian Minister of Labor, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Janez Cigler Kralj, in his address pointed out that young people have been severely affected by the COVID-19 crisis, which is why it’s extremely important to provide support for young people both in the EU and in the Western Balkans. Participants in the meeting noted that the Republic of North Macedonia is the first and only country in the region which took “pioneering” steps in this direction in 2018, piloting the Youth Guarantee, fully based on the EU model, and since 2019 the initiative has been implemented across the entire country, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy said in a press release. “About 60,000 young people have taken part in the Youth Guarantee program in North Macedonia so far. I’d like to point out that since 2019, statistics related to the labor market show significant and major improvement in relation to young people. The youth employment rate has increased by 3.5 percentage points compared to 2018. The youth unemployment rate has dropped from 37 percent to 30.5 percent, while the NEETs rate has also dropped significantly by 5.3 percentage points, from 29 percent to 24.5 percent,” Shahpaska noted. She stressed that the challenges related to young people, their employment, activation, participation and sustainable integration in the labor market, are common to all countries in the region, but also to the Union. According to her, these challenges have become even more pronounced in the recent period when the world was affected by the health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Young people are one of the categories that have been indeed hit hard by the crisis,” said Shahpaska. In this context, the ministers and the representatives of the Western Balkans responsible for employment endorsed a Declaration on ensuring sustainable labour market integration of young people, with concrete steps to gradually establish, implement and enhance, respectively, Youth Guarantee schemes. While domestic resources need to be allocated for the implementation of the scheme, the European Union will support financially its deployment as a flagship initiative under the Economic and Investment Plan for Western Balkans. “With the Declaration, the ministers agreed that all countries in the region start preparing and implementing the Youth Guarantee, following the example and model developed in the European Union, and put this initiative high on their political agendas, providing the necessary human and financial resources for that purpose,” reads the Ministry’s press release. The ministerial meeting was held as part of the Slovenian EU Presidency, which started on July 1.