ROME, November 24, 19:07 /ITAR-TASS/. Youth unemployment is Italy’s most serious problem that demands an immediate solution, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letto said on Sunday in an interview with Itar-Tass, Rossiya-24 television and the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily.
“The number of young unemployed people has been continuously growing in my country over the past five years. And this is a rather new phenomenon, there have never been so many unemployed young Italians, as our system has always been generating jobs. But the latest economic crisis has affected the young generation the highest, depriving them of hope,” Letta said.
He is strongly upset by the fact that many young Italians see their future outside Italy. “I see guarantees to the young generation that could find their place in Italy, as my paramount task. The present figure of 40 percent unemployed among the youth is inacceptable, it must be brought down, that is why in the first few months of my premiership I took measures encouraging the companies that take up young people,” the prime minister said.
He noted that this problem must be also settled on the European level. “Early next year, Italy will host a highest level meeting of heads of state and government from the EU countries, as well as ministers, to look for measures to cope with youth unemployment,” the prime minister said.
He also acknowleged a host of problem existing in the country - a high foreign debt, budget deficit, lingering economic decline, heavy bureaucracy, not fair enough system of social insurance, a gap between the south, which has more problems, and the more prosperous north of the country. “But still I give primacy to fight against youth unemployment, so that to give a hope to the young and the future to the country,” Enrico Letta summed up.