New Euro-Mediterranean initiative for Youth Employment Promotion

New arab

The Arab Spring offers new opportunities for regional co-operation in the southern Neighbourhood. Many of the challenges facing partner countries can only be taken up effectively at regional or sub-regional level.

Unemployment, social exclusion, inequality and poverty are at the heart of people´s concerns for the future. They are among the root causes of instability and unrest and need to be addressed to make democratisation sustainable. They require partner countries to reform and adopt an integrated approach with a mix of economic, fiscal, employment, social and education policies. The EU is ready to support such reforms through targeted measures aimed at promoting social cohesion and employment (in particular of young people).

Objectives of the program and priority issues

The general objective of the Preparatory Action is to facilitate learning, networking and exchange of experience for new young professionals through periods spent working in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) run by experienced entrepreneurs in another country.

These exchanges of experience will be done following a two-way flow (EU-Southern Mediterranean and vice-versa) of young professionals. The countries covered by this Preparatory Action will be all EU Member States, together with the 10 southern Neighbourhood countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia).

The main beneficiaries will be young professionals who intend to, or are in the process of setting up their company (potential entrepreneurs).

Activities of the young professionals during their stay abroad will include:

Shadowing a senior Host Entrepreneur (HE);
Market research and development of new business opportunities;
Project development, innovation and research and development;
Taking a fresh look at existing business operations;
Understanding SME finance;

Branding, sales and marking of the host entrepreneur´s company;

Working on concrete projects from one or more of the above mentioned areas.

The specific objective (s) of this Call for Proposals are:

To provide on-the-job-training for new entrepreneurs in small and medium-sized enterprises elsewhere in the Participating Countries in order to facilitate a successful start-up, and development of their business ideas;
To foster sharing of experience and information between entrepreneurs on the obstacles and challenges of starting up and developing their businesses;
To support networking between entrepreneurs from different Participating Countries by building on knowledge and experience from other Participating Countries.
The Applicant will develop high quality standards so as to deliver the following expected output for this call for proposals;
Further developing a network of new entrepreneurs (NEs), host entrepreneurs (HEs) and Intermediary Organisations (Ios);
Creating new businesses, joint ventures and spin-off companies and foster cross-border business cooperation.
Enhancing the international activities and innovation potential of host entrepreneurs.

Financial allocation provided by the contracting authority

The overall indicative amount made available under this Call for Proposals is € 1.000.000. The Contracting Authority reserves the right not to award all available funds.

Size of grants

Any grant requested under this Call for Proposals must fall between the following minimum and maximum amounts:

minimum amount: € 250.000
maximum amount: € 500.000

Deadline for submission of Applications

The deadline for the submission of applications is 09/08/2013 as evidenced by the date of dispatch, the postmark or the date of the deposit slip. In the case of hand-deliveries, the deadline for receipt is at 16:00 CET as evidenced by the signed and dated receipt.

Any application submitted after the deadline will automatically be rejected.