To give young Europeans the opportunities they need and are entitled to a better future, we must continue and reinforce progressive action in youth policies.

This is why we launched the European Youth Plan, a major initiative to accompany young people from pre-school age until the job market. It starts from early childhood with the À ght for the basic rights of every child in Europe to be protected and goes on with measures to guarantee smooth school to work, and work to work transitions, and access to quality jobs, education, training, sport and culture for young people. These measures aim not only at reducing inequalities between our youth, but also to address the generation gap that resulted from the À nancial crisis. This is about giving a quality life to all young people in Europe today. It is also about laying the foundations for better and fairer societies of tomorrow. Young people need to be respected, valued, encouraged and supported in fulfilling their potential and aspirations. In this process, their voices are key in making our societies more democratic, prosperous, fair and equal.

1. For us, investing in children and youth is the best solution. We want a Europe that provides quality jobs and opportunities, enhances access to quality education and health services for their mental and physical wellbeing, makes lifelong learning a reality, facilitates mobility and volunteering and promotes the active participation of young people in decision-making. Everyone must enjoy decent working conditions and be paid fairly for the work they do. The question of quality employment remains one of the most important priorities for young Europeans. To reach our goals of full youth employment and reducing social exclusion, we consider it fundamental that the Youth Guarantee continues to provide long-term, quality, sustainable solutions for young people. The PES family campaigned for the creation of this programme, which guarantees a job offer, further education, apprenticeship or traineeship to young Europeans within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education. Our political family will continue the À ght to increase funding of this successful scheme, which has so far helped over 9 million young people across the EU. We call for the scheme to be made permanent and to strengthen national implementations. So that more young people can beneÀ t, we want to raise the age limit to 30 years old, and to make this instrument a permanent tool in the À ght against youth unemployment while increasing coverage of the most vulnerable groups such as young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs) and young migrants. At the same time,