Contribution to Deliverable 8.2 (WP 8): Strategies to improve labour market integration of young people: Comparing policy coordination in nine European countries. Country Report Switzerland

As a Non-EU member Switzerland is not obliged to implement the Youth Guarantee scheme. As such, the national resonance regarding this EU programme is very modest and there is little benefit in measuring the discourse on the Youth Guarantee in Switzerland. In search of a comparable policy event we decided to focus on a public referendum from the year 2003 that advocates the improvement of young people’s prospects in education and in the labour market, which would enable us to draw some equivalent conclusions on the discourse surrounding youth policy in Switzerland. Similar to the EU’s Youth Guarantee, the Swiss referendum Apprenticeship Initiative (“Lehrstelleninitiative”) – proposed a state-regulated guarantee on Vocational Education and Training (VET). First we will provide a summary and analysis of the national discourse on the Apprenticeship Initiative that was clearly rejected in 2003 in section two . The discourse involves the opponents arguing from an economically liberal point of view, showing reluctance to give more power to the central state and the proponents emphasising the decrease in the amount of apprenticeship positions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since no national department for youth exists in Switzerland, the authorities responsible for youth policy are located on a cantonal or local level. Hence, we propose to take a look at the cantonal implementation of some youth policies in section three. The Canton of Jura as one of the only two Swiss cantons, which have a youth guarantee in their cantonal constitution, will be analysed as a case study. Three Swiss Active Labour Market Policy (ALMP) measures for young people will be presented in section four. The focus will be on the horizontal and vertical coordination of these measures, how they are implemented in different cantons, and the evaluation of these programmes.