Young people's role in the green transition

Key points

The EESC:

• believes that to enable young people to play a crucial role in the context of the green transition, a new more inclusive governance model that is capable of ensuring the active involvement of young people in decision-making processes is essential;
• points at the importance of ensuring a leading role for youth organisations in the decision-making process and in the development and dissemination of projects relating to sustainability and the environment; calls in this regard on the EU institutions to provide these organisations with structural financial support through adequate and specific resources, so that they have the right conditions to ensure and develop young people's engagement in the green transition;
• considers it necessary to start teaching sustainability and environmental protection issues from an early age; points at the importance of equipping workers, both younger and older, with the skills needed to govern the innovation brought about by the green transition, with an emphasis on work-based learning, on-the-job training and quality internships and apprenticeships; it is important to link the initiatives and policies that will be adopted in the context of the European Year of Skills to the theme of the green transition and sustainable development and to the challenges faced by young people in a rapidly changing world;
• encourages EU institutions and Member States to implement measures to ensure that the youth perspective is taken into account in all policy areas, and to create a space for young people to make a coherent and competency-based contribution to the challenges they face through the full adoption of the EU Youth Test;
• considers that Member States should invest significant resources to support businesses that need to convert their activities, to redeploy workers who have been made redundant and to support entrepreneurs, particularly young ones, who intend to invest in green businesses, so that the green transition is also a just transition; more resources are also needed to offer young people careers guidance at school and to support them into work.