BRUSSELS -- European Union (EU) President Herman van Rompuy called on the EU leaders to agree on tangible measures to improving job market for youth on Wednesday,just before the two-day EU summit that would launch next day.
"As a matter of priority we should speed up the Youth Employment Initiative, set up Youth Guarantee schemes, mobilize all available resources in support of youth employment, and increase youth mobility," said van Rompuy in an invitation letter to the summit attenders.
Record high unemployment rate across the EU put youth job market to top of the agenda. The jobless rates for the EU and eurozone are both around 11 percent, shown by the Eurostat.
"Considering the urgent need to restore credit flows in the economy, we should launch a new Investment action plan, with measures to support SMEs and boost the financing of the economy," van Rompuy added.
According to the summit agenda, another issue would be the progress on the completion of the EU's economic and monetary union, in particular the banking union. Such union is preparing the second step which called "single solution mechanism ".
The EU finance ministers failed to reach agreement on rules last Friday, due to member states splitting on who will take the loss.
Britain, Sweden and France opposed that imposed losses on depositors would hurt confidence towards bank sector. Germany preferred to set rules that would ensure a bail-in with investors rather than taxpayers and the EU rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism.
At the summit meeting, the EU leaders will gather again to tackle with the divergence which risks delaying the establishment of banking union.
